Born in Sydney, Gary Heery has spent five decades behind the camera — from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he co-founded a magazine chronicling Native American culture, to a Soho studio in New York, where his portraits of Madonna, Andy Warhol and Paul Simon helped define an era. His images appeared on album covers for Roy Orbison and Ray Charles, and in the pages of Life, Esquire, Rolling Stone and Interview.

Since returning to Sydney in 1987, that same eye for character has carried into advertising and fashion campaigns for clients including Qantas, Coca-Cola and American Express, alongside a growing body of fine art photography — birds, flowers, horses, portraiture — collected across more than a dozen books and exhibitions. A finalist in both the Citibank Portrait Prize and the National Photographic Portrait Prize, Heery brings the same steady curiosity to a rock star as he does to a sea eagle.

Selected Works

Gary Heery: Selected Works 1976 - 2013

A career retrospective from Australia's premiere portrait photographer, featuring 300+ pages of images from Life, Esquire, Vogue and Rolling Stone, album covers and movie posters for Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Jodie Foster, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Andy Warhol, and portraits from his renowned flora and fauna collection.

"...It is that subjective, responsive faculty which has guided Heery to articulate and examine his subjects, to engage with them, sense their distinctive qualities and massage them into compositions that satisfy not only as visual experiences but also as revelations of the soul."
— Edmund Capon

Bird

Feathered friends are the subject of Bird, the latest book from Gary Heery. To capture the birds in motion he erected a translucent tent, creating an intimate and contained environment in which the birds could fly. “I treated it, not unlike any other portraiture situation, as a kind of controlled spontaneity,” he says. The end result is a collection of dynamic, yet almost clinically detailed, images, with each bird’s distinct personality captured in all its glory.

"I treated it, not unlike any other portraiture situation, as a kind of controlled spontaneity."
— Gary Heery, The Guardian

Classic Portrait

The image Gary Heery has spent his entire career perfecting — by his own account, what he does best.

Master Class

For those who already have a distinct style, and want help articulating their own point of view.

Keynote Speaking

Drawing on five decades behind the camera, Heery shares the stories behind his most iconic images.