Archival Polaroid, 1980s
INTRODUCTION
It is telling that an image from one of Neil Kirk’s stories for Vogue, titled ‘Active British Style’ (see page 189), was chosen to illustrate the 1980s in British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon, which documents the story of British Vogue magazine, including the arrival of Anna Wintour as editor-in-chief in 1986.
The use of the word ‘active’ in the title given to Kirk’s fashion story is crucial. In his photographs the models are always on the move, doing something, about to do something: about to get into a car and drive some place, about to run into a friend or perhaps a lover, about to stride into a meeting that could change their lives. They are caught mid-action, always going somewhere or enroute to somewhere else. His images capture a world in flux. It was a mood that fitted Wintour’s vision well. One of her first editorials reads: ‘what’s hot, what’s coming on next…’
Kirk’s photographs present a lifestyle. Unquestionably upmarket and as much a fantasy and escapist as the more esoteric, chimerical fashion stories that graced the pages of Vogue, Kirk often accessorised his models with a car, a boat, a helicopter, or a little less showily, with a dog or male co-star. The world he constructed mirrored that desired and dreamed about by the magazine’s readers. As noted by Robin Derrick, one-time art director of British Vogue who collaborated with the photographer, the images Kirk created were extremely popular with readers.
Perhaps their popularity was because the models never looked too perfect. Kirk found beauty in the imperfections of the day-to-day. ‘I’m not interested in perfection,’ he said, ‘because perfection is boring.’ As Vogue explained, ‘Kirk likes to catch his subjects a little off-guard.’
Kirk certainly enjoyed such mischief making and revelled in the absurdity of the situation. ‘Too many photographers haven’t come to terms with the fact that photography isn’t art, it’s entertainment,’ he told Vogue ‘The moment they realise that, they’ll have a lot more fun.’
And fun was had by Kirk and his team in numerous glamorous locations, be it La Rocca di Soragna in Palma or Venice Beach, Cap d’Antibes, St Barts, Paris or Marrakech. Yet, many of Kirk’s era-defining images were photographed on the tad less alluring Holborn Viaduct in London. His photographs are a series of captured, albeit constructed, moments – the important alongside the incidental. In US Vogue’s contributor’s column, dated March 1990, Kirk referred to his photographs as ‘manufactured accidents’.
On rare occasion, the models in Kirk’s photographs wore couture, but wore it with a certain nonchalance, as if a sweater and jeans. Mostly, they wore the kind of clothes that women wear to go about their lives. This highlights a skill often overlooked. It is easy for a photographer or editor to take an extravagant show-stopping ensemble directly from the haute-couture catwalk and make an equally arresting image, but Kirk’s photographs often included clothes familiar to all, that didn’t even bear a designer label. His talent was to add a layer of dynamism to his pictures that made these clothes as equally desirable as their flashy couture counterparts. Kirk’s images are not precious. They are about a life to be enjoyed, a future yet lived. They are fun.
IAIN R WEBB
Vogue, June 1997, Salma Kayek and Philip Bloch
British Vogue, June 1997, Valentino Garavani
I remember the good vibes in this day, how much we laughed and how it felt like we were in our own little hazy sunshine bubble, Neil, me and the small team.
I LOVE THE POOL PHOTO
SO MUCH. IT DEFINES THAT ENTIRE ERA SO WELL,
in mood, colours, compositions and atmosphere. It almost looks like a poster I would’ve had hanging on my wall in my teens.
Helena Christensen, MODEL
I had just arrived from Sydney, Australia in 1994, when I started working with Neil on various magazines –British Vogue, GQ, Italian Donna and CN Traveler, where Mark Connolly was the fashion director. I had met
Mark already in Sydney. IT WAS ALWAYS AN
ADVENTURE WITH NEIL.
We travelled the globe together. NEIL
WAS ALWAYS A CRAZY PERFECT GENTLEMAN, PSYCHOANALYSING MY THOUGHT PROCESSES.
He was like a father figure to me. I did my first ever Vogue shoot with him, [fashion editor] Anna Harvey and [hairdresser] Eugene Souleiman, which we shot at Canary Wharf. I was so full of myself that I remember while Anna was explaining the concept for the story in the Winnebago truck, I was sat there burning holes in my Jean Paul Gaultier chiffon coat because that seemed cool at the time, to make Gaultier more me, more personal. I have no idea what Anna or Neil must’ve thought, but it’s how we lived as individuals at that time. Destroying a designer piece of clothing was acceptable to me to make it more individual. It was still important to be revolutionary, a rebel, or that was my thinking at the time. I remember that the Yasmeen Ghauri shoot we did together was so nerve wracking as she was a bona fide supermodel and I felt like a mere country bumpkin from Bristol via Sydney. Neil gave me my big glossy break and for that he will always be a treasure and mentor in my fashion make-up history.
Val Garland, MAKE-UP ARTIST
The image of the billowing Dior coat and oversized hat, with fabulous Greta Cavazzoni striding across a Rome palazzo has Neil’s signature all over it [see page 198]! The moving, walking, running action, almost film-like quality was very Mr. Kirk. It was for British Vogue, February 1990, and I can hear Neil shouting instructions to Keith Henderson, his ever-patient assistant to run and get people out of the shot and carry this lens and change this film… Neil was talented, hugely amusing but extremely demanding. We were in Rome shooting in and around the city and doing the classic ‘jumping off the curb’ images which were so ’80s and ’90s. High black courts and movement, even using a gust of wind to encourage the shape of the coat.
I loved working with Neil – he was fun, energetic, never took anything much in the fashion world that seriously and yet was a perfectionist when it came to getting a good picture. He understood brilliantly how the combination of the model, the clothes and the location all had to work together and he had an innate way of getting any complicated situation to work perfectly in an image.
THE £2000 VERSACE JACKET ON THE BACK OF A MOPED IS ALSO AN
ICONIC NEIL PICTURE.
Let’s have fun with this, would have been his thoughts. Vera Cox was always up for anything and when told to get on the moped and drive it, she promptly crashed it into a parked car. Undeterred, Neil pulled in the moped driver and told Vera to get on the back and got the shot that way. This was in Milan for the collections issue, British Vogue January 1990. I can almost hear the whole team shouting and laughing as Vera tore off down the street. Nothing was quiet about a Neil Kirk shoot. If he wasn’t discussing the picture or clothes, he would be challenging you on a book or an opinion on a person. He was testing, outspoken, quick-witted and sharp but a brilliant photographer.
You could immediately tell a Neil Kirk picture; almost always on location; he was the king of the location shoot, beautiful light and almost always moving or bringing some form of energy to the picture. Did Neil get the international recognition he deserved within the industry? I don’t think so. His images, in editorial pages, often outnumbered those taken by other big-name photographers. He photographed famous personalities and enormous advertising campaigns and was massively talented, with an intelligence that rose above the simple fact of depicting frocks.
Harriett Jagger, FASHION EDITOR, BRITISH VOGUE
Front cover: British Vogue , 1995 (see also page 76)
Pages 10–11, 60–61 and 78–79: Archival Polaroids, 1980s
Back cover: Archival Polaroids, 1980s (see also page 68)
© 2026 Vivienne Kirk
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