Andy Earl: Flash and Blur
Bonington Gallery is delighted to present Flash and Blur, an exhibition of photography, video and archival material by the critically acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Andy Earl (b. 1955). Spanning four decades, the exhibition traces Earl’s remarkable career, from his time as a photography student at Nottingham Trent University (1974-1977) to the present day.
In 1978, Earl exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery in London as part of an exhibition exploring contemporary European photography. The painterly quality in Earl’s photographs attracted the attention of music impresario Malcolm McLaren, who subsequently commissioned Earl to create the cover for Bow Wow Wow’s debut album – a re-enactment of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. In 1979, Earl was invited to participate in Venice 79, a major international survey of contemporary photography presented as an extension to Venice Biennale series. These early opportunities and exhibitions helped establish Earl’s reputation on the international stage and marked important milestones in his burgeoning career.
Following an accidental kick to a tripod during a photoshoot, Earl embraced the creative possibilities of combining movement, slow shutter speeds and sharp flash photography. The resulting aesthetic became his signature ‘flash and blur’ technique, defining much of his work from the late 1970s through to the 1990s and attracting the admiration of photographers including David Bailey. Accompanying many of Earl’s photographs are stories and anecdotes that reveal the encounters and relationships Earl developed with his subjects, several of which will be shared in the exhibition.
Across a career that includes more than 200 album covers, editorial commissions for Rolling Stone, NME and Q magazine, and projects for Canon, Samsung, Deutsche Bank and the BBC, Earl has photographed some of the most influential cultural figures of the past half-century. His subjects include Annie Lennox, Madonna, Morrissey, Pink Floyd, Oasis, Prince, Mick Jagger, King Charles III, and Sir David Attenborough. In the 1990s, Earl produced the iconic photographs of Johnny Cash used for American Recordings, the first album in Cash’s celebrated collaboration with producer Rick Rubin.
Beyond his photographic practice, Earl has directed and contributed to more than 20 music videos. Among his most pioneering projects was his work on the Michel Gondry-directed video for The Rolling Stones’ Bob Dylan cover Like a Rolling Stone, which combined 12,000 still photographs captured using two handheld cameras and animated in sequence. The resulting visual effect echoed Earl’s flash and blur experiments from the late 1970s and proved highly influential in the development of the technique later known as Bullet Time, most famously employed by The Wachowskis in The Matrix films.
Through photography, film and archive, Flash and Blur celebrates Andy Earl’s enduring contribution to visual culture and reveals the innovative spirit that has defined his work for more than four decades.
Credit for main image: Andy Earl: Duran Duran (Rio), London 1983.
Flash and Blur is a continuation in a series of recent solo exhibitions by Andy Earl that first took place at TheGallery at Arts University Bournemouth – See or be Seen (October 2025) and the follow up Andy Earl X Bankside Yards (May 2026), both curated by AUB TheGallery Curator Violet M McClean.
