Tim Motion

Tim Motion was born in Ireland. When he was 2 his parents moved to England where he grew up studying art, music and photography, later working for the first London minicabs, frequenting the 606 club in Kings Road, and learning to play the double bass. Moving to the Algarve, he ran a disco/jazz club, hosting artists such as Ronnie Scott, Cat Stevens, Georgie Fame, Jon Hendricks, Brian Auger and Jim Mullen.

Through a friend, Luis Vilas Boas, organiser of the first Lisbon Jazz Festival in 1971, he gained a photo pass which resulted in the first images in his archive, including Miles Davis. He began building up the extensive archive of jazz photographs which have been published in national newspapers, Paris Vogue and specialist books and magazines. His book "Jazz Portraits-An Eye for The Sound", published in 1995 in London, Paris and New York, contains the foreword by Ronnie Scott, who describes the empathy that jazz musicians have with jazz photographers as being "understandable when one considers that both are concerned with the moment. For the musician it is the fleeting moment that involves the creation of some kind of valid music, and for the photographer the attempt to express it in pictorial terms.” Scott lists Tim Motion as one of the main named photographers who have "enormous sympathy for jazz musicians" alongside Val Wilmer and David Redfern.

Tim Motion’s work has been exhibited in the UK, France, Spain, Brazil and USA and is held by collectors worldwide.

“The photographs reflect a real labour of love, capturing the great musicians that I have been lucky enough to watch perform, fusing my passion for jazz music and photography, preserving the memory of the undeniably great performers portrayed here, which strengthens my love of both.”

View a selection of Tim’s works below ↓