Lottie Davies was born in Guildford, UK, in 1971. She had a happy and conventional childhood in Surrey with her parents and two brothers, and was educated in Alton and Godalming. After a degree in philosophy at St Andrews University in Scotland, she moved back to England to learn the photographic trade as an assistant in London, where she has been based for the past fourteen years. Lottie has been working as a professional photographer since 2000.

Lottie's unique style has been employed in a variety of contexts, including newspapers, glossy magazines, books and advertising. She has won recognition in numerous awards, including the Association of Photographers' Awards, the International Color Awards, the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Awards, and the Foto8 Summer Show 2008. Most recently, she has garnered international acclaim with her image Quints, which won First Prize at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Awards 2008 and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Her travel work ranges over six continents, and has taken her to such diverse destinations as the Namib Desert, the Julian Alps, the Gulf Islands of British Colombia and the frozen island of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. In the course of her adventures she has had tea with a Guatemalan presidential candidate, made stir-fry for Bushmen in the Kalahari, been bitten by a monkey in Nepal, got lost in Slovenia, tasted every whisky on the beautiful Isle of Islay, and faced a charging elephant in Namibia!

As a photojournalist, she focuses on lesser-known communities and on ethno-political issues, putting forward a sharply critical view of contemporary Western complacency, with a desire to illuminate the lives of those often overlooked.

Her portraiture and editorial work is equally wide-ranging, from highly-produced set-pieces to 'found' imagery, and this breadth of experience in varying approaches informs the fine art work for which Lottie is rapidly becoming known.

Her fine art work is concerned with stories and personal histories, the tales and myths we use to structure our lives: memories, life-stories, beliefs. She takes inspiration from classical and modern painting, cinema and theatre as well as the imaginary worlds of literature. She employs a deliberate reworking of our visual vocabulary, playing on our notions of nostalgia, visual conventions and subconscious 'looking habits', with the intention of evoking a sense of narrative and movement. Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, has described Davies' work as "brilliantly imaginative".

Published interviews with Lottie: (pdf)
Hotshoe Magazine (UK)   Image Magazine   Photo Pro (UK)   Professional Photographer (UK)   Zoum Zoum Liberation online (France)