Commercial photographer and director, Hugh Stewart, has brought his international renown to Flipp. Flipp is now managing Stewart’s commercial work in Australasia.
Stewart is known for capturing portraits of people spanning the most famous to the completely unknown in a beautifully intimate way. These include Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood and Cate Blanchett as well as five Australian prime ministers.
He has portraits hanging in the National Portrait Galleries of London and Canberra, and his images have been used on the pages of I-D magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and British, French, American, and Australian Vogue. His commercial clients include Sony, Microsoft, Levis, J.Crew, Singapore Airlines, Emirates Airlines, Australian Tourism, RM Williams, HBO, Netflix, Warner Bros, Sydney Theatre Company, Mastercard and Chanel.
Stewart was recently working with long-term creative collaborator, Baz Luhrmann, on the feature, Elvis. His stories and images will appear when the film is released next year.
Stewart also used lockdown, not as downtime, but an opportunity to work on a striking project. He created a deeply personal Facetime Portraits series, calling for subjects on Instagram and shooting anyone who responded. These have numbered more than 350 people from around the world so far. He has framed them within a computer monitor (spoils from the 2020 National Photographic Portrait Prize) and the resulting series is presented as a unique commentary on the new reality of human connection. It has been featured in Australian Vogue, SMH and the ABC.
Again, using the democratic process of never rejecting any applicants, Hugh also worked with ex-Rolling Stone photo editor, Rachel Knepfer, to curate an exhibition in the street-facing windows of his Halls Lane Gallery in Woollahra. Accepting all photo submissions, they taped up printed images of Barack Obama, Iggy Pop, local cats and mushrooms, giving each equal space in the window exhibition. It became a local hit, becoming a destination for the “permitted walks” that proliferated during Sydney’s lockdown and a wonderful creative community collab.
Stewart commented, “The post-lockdown world offers great opportunities for intimate storytelling. I love the idea of creating narrative in imagery. It provides us with an entry, or a window, into people’s worlds and a new and exciting way to connect.”
In a synchronicity of philosophy, Flipp also used Sydney’s second lockdown to cook up a unique platform, Creative Throwdown, offering agency creatives an opportunity to book a time to connect face-to-face with the Flipp Artists. The Creative Throwdown meetings offer commercial creatives a chance to discuss concept development virtually, allow the Flipp artist show and share their work, and create a space for personal connection.
Book a Creative Throwdown with Hugh (or any of the other FLIPP Artists) here.
View Stewart’s photography and directing work here.
