Born in 1945, Clive Barda took a degree in Modern Languages and began his professional career in the City but his increasing interest in both photography and music led to his deciding in 1967 to become a professional photographer.

His career developed rapidly, initially on a broad basis, with regular commissions from leading magazines. His burgeoning interest in music and the arts led to his becoming more deeply involved in these areas and to regular work with leading record, opera and theatre companies. Having worked, amongst others, for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips and Decca, and for the RNT, the RSC, the Royal Opera, ENO, WNO and the Really Useful Group, most notably on Phantom of the Opera, he is now recognised as one of London's leading performing arts photographers.

Clive Barda's work has been exhibited widely. In 1979 he had a major exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall which later travelled to Manchester and Australia. In 1985 he participated in a joint exhibition with Snowdon and Patrick Lichfield at the Science Museum in London and the Royal Photographic Society in Bath and in 1988 he had a one-man show of his opera photographs at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. In 1996 a major exhibition of Clive Barda's photography marked the opening of the new Nagaoka Lyric Hall in Japan and was later presented in Tokyo in 1998.

His work is in the permanent collections of both the National Museum of Photography Film & TV in Bradford and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

A passionate lover of the performing arts, especially music, Clive Barda has a unique ability to identify with his subjects and conveys this understanding in his images. He says his preferred way of working is to allow an artist to rehearse or perform as if he were not present (he is famously discreet) and then gradually to become part of the creative process himself, the photographs arising naturally from the ebb and flow of the music or drama.

During the course of his career Clive Barda has enjoyed working with the world's greatest artists. Each of his photographs is made with love and careful thought to convey not only a particular facet of the performer in question but also to try to capture a unique instant in the preparation and creation of a performance. Clive Barda brings the same dedication to his commercial work, always seeking to give dramatic impact to both his portraits and location pictures.

A new book "Performance!", a retrospective of Clive Barda's work with classical musicians over the past thirty years, has recently been published to considerable acclaim. It is edited by Colin Ford, former Director of the National Museum of Photography, Film and TV and is available directly from the publishers Peter Biddulph (publications@peterbiddulph.com), price £50.

Clive Barda has also illustrated two books: a photographic survey of the work of the sculptor David Wynne for which he did all the photography, published by Phaidon Press, and a volume celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Edinburgh International Festival for which he was the principal photographer. Clive Barda's photographs appear continually in books and in all the media and are available through ArenaPAL in London (www.arenaimages.com).