Caroline Irby, Untitled (Tajikistan), 2007, Digital C-Type Print

Caroline Irby is a contemporary British photographer based in London. Her focus is on social documentary, portraiture, and advertising photography, and her work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Known for images that combine a sense of the enigmatic with a profound sensitivity, Irby's "work contains great tension and emotional charge.’ The Times

Biographical information

After graduating in Philosophy and French from Edinburgh University, for several years Caroline worked mainly in developing countries: on editorial assignments, NGO commissions, and personal projects, motivated by a faith in photography’s capacity to connect the viewer to the subject; to link worlds that often appear disconnected.

Increasingly the subjects Caroline chooses are closer to home. Her particular areas of interest are immigration and children. She has always written as well as photographed, starting at 17 with articles in the Independent and Evening Standard. During 2009 Caroline had a weekly photograph and interview column, Seen and Heard, in the Guardian Weekend Magazine, and during 2011-2012 she had a column in Mainichi newspaper, Japan: a photograph and story about a different child each week, who she has met through her work and travels.

In 2010, Caroline’s first book, A Child from Everywhere, was published by Black Dog Publishing. For this project, she photographed and interviewed children from 185 different countries, all now living in the UK. From 2014-15, Caroline was a contributing editor to Newsweek Magazine.

Her work has been shown at venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, Royal Festival Hall, Somerset House, the Edinburgh G8 summit, The World Children’s Art Museum, Japan, and the National Parliament, Uganda.

Caroline’s second book, ‘Someone else’s mother’, was published by Schilt in 2020 and is available in most bookshops. As a child, Caroline was looked after by a Filipina woman called Juning, who lived with Caroline’s family in London for 22 years, while her own four children grew up on a small island in the Philippines, 7,000 miles away. In ‘Someone Else’s Mother’, Caroline tells Juning’s story and brings into focus the lives of the children she left, carefully interweaving these stories with her own recollections of a childhood spent with their mother. The book has received very positive reviews and an exhibition will follow once life opens up again post-Covid.

‘Irby has managed successfully to tread the line between voyeuristic intrusion and misplaced sentimentality… Her work contains great tension and emotional charge.’ The Times