Misan Harriman didn’t become a photographer till five years ago, when his wife gave him a camera for his fortieth birthday. Since then he’s become world-famous, photographing celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett, and Meghan Markle – his was the romantic black-and-white photograph of Harry and Meghan announcing her pregnancy last year. Alongside these high-profile celebrity commissions, he’s also become a photographer known for documenting Extinction Rebellion, anti-Trump protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020 he became the first black person in the 104-year history of British Vogue to shoot the cover of its prestigious September issue; last year he became the Chair of the Southbank Centre, the renowned arts complex in London.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Misan talks about his journey to become a photographer, from early childhood in Nigeria to his time at an English boarding school. He reveals his “superpower” of dyslexia, and how he’s found a new way of shooting portraits in lockdown: “remote photography”.
Misan Harriman is a passionate film buff, and all his music choices come from movies that have made a profound impression on him, from the soundtrack to “Ghost” which he saw as a boy, to William Walton’s score for “Henry V” and the moving Dunkirk scene in “Atonement”.
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke