Chris Simpson

Biography

Chris Simpson was born in Zurich in 1952 and in 1955, Simpson’s father was posted to Mauritius to continue with his career in the Colonial Service. Simpson’s life as a young boy was an unusual one. He spent some of his time at boarding school in England and the rest of his time back in Mauritius. Simpson didn’t really feel that he fitted in at school and when asked by a careers teacher what he wanted to do, he still had no idea.

Simpson’s parents came over to the UK in 1970 to help support him in his decisions to further his education. With a tourism boom in Mauritius taking off, he thought he would do a course in Hotel Management. However, a brief stint in a busy London hotel was all it took for Simpson to think again and he decided to go to Art School in London instead.

During his final year Simpson was on a visit home to Mauritius when he managed to persuade a French Production Company to hire him as a stills photographer for a TV series. This was to be a turning point and confirmed to him that photography would be his specialism and path in life. Simpson also landed a job of shooting for some fashion magazines in his final year at college and this would continue for some twenty years.

1988 proved to be another turning point in Simpson’s life when he was offered a series of shows to exhibit his previous years work of photos of Australian Aborigine’s and the Australian outback to celebrate Australia’s Bicentennial year. The result of these exhibits was a top London Agency called Foote, Cone and Belding giving him his first big break into ‘Blue Chip’ advertising by giving him the Australia Tourist Board account to shoot.

Simpson’s work aims to eliminate clutter and to encourage clean compositional lines with the aim being for the foreground to draw the viewer into the picture towards the main focus of the picture whether that is a person, a tree or a threatening sky.