Steve Bloom (b. 1953, Johannesburg, South Africa) is a photographer and writer. He is best known for his photography books and essays, many of which feature wildlife; as well as his large scale outdoor exhibitions called Spirit of the Wild.
Bloom's early interest in photography was inspired by the pictures in Life Magazine. In 1972 he trained as a gravure printer, and took portraits of people living under the Apartheid system. In 1977 he travelled to England where some of the pictures were published and exhibited internationally by The International Defence and Aid Fund.
For several years he worked in graphic arts, and in 1999 was jointly responsible for the implementation of the Addison designs for the official posters for the summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, 1992.
Bloom began to photograph wildlife in 1993 while on vacation in South Africa. In 1996 he devoted all his time to wildlife photography and spent the following two years working on his first book, In Praise of Primates, which was published in ten languages .
In 2004 Untamed, an oversize book that features animals from all the world's continents, was published in ten language editions for its first printing.
Two monographs were published in 2006: Elephant! and Spirit of the Wild.In 2006 he returned to photographing people. Living Africa, published in 2008, is a body of photographs covering several African countries, mixing photographs of wildlife, remote tribal groups and people in cities, including gold miners 3 km underground. Bloom's second book on Africa, Trading Places - The Merchants of Nairobi, features subsistence shopkeepers in the suburbs of Nairobi, including Kibera.
By 2010, Steve Bloom had produced eleven city centre outdoor exhibitions called Spirit of the Wild, each consisting of up to 100 large format weather-sealed prints. Free and usually open to the public 24 hours a day, the theme of the exhibitions was to engender awareness of habitat encroachment and global warming. The inaugural exhibition, in Birmingham, UK, ran for eleven months in Centenary Square. Further exhibitions followed in Copenhagen, Leeds, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Moscow, Dublin, Oslo,Stavanger, Barcelona and Edinburgh. The Copenhagen exhibition opened on 16 May 2006 and was visited by 1,019,028 people during the first three months.
Trading Places - The Merchants of Nairobi (Thames & Hudson) — 2009 ISBN 050054381XLiving Africa (Thames & Hudson) — 2008 ISBN 0500514275
Untamed (Abrams) — Paperback Compact ediion 2008 ISBN 0810972379Spirit of the Wild (Thames & Hudson) — 2006 ISBN 0500514372Elephant! (Thames & Hudson) — 2006 ISBN 050051321XSpirit of the Wild (Steve Bloom Editions) — 96 pages (Exhibition edition)Untamed (Abrams) Hardback — 2004 ISBN 081095611XIn Praise of Primates (Könemann Verlag) — 1999 ISBN 3829015569Elephants: A Book for Children (Thames & Hudson) (text by David Henry Wilson) 2007 ISBN 0500543445My Favourite Animal Families (Thames & Hudson) (text by David Henry Wilson) 2010 ISBN 0500543909Portraits d'animaux. Les ours (Editions de la Martiničre) 2010 ISBN 2732440515Untamed Animals of the World (Children's Edition) (Abrams) 2006 ISBN 0810959887
Life: Photography Exposed: The Story behind the Image (Time Life 2005 ISBN 1932994033)Photo Wisdom - Master Photographers in their Art - Lewis Blackwell (Chronicle Books 2009 ISBN 0473150948)The World’s Top Photographers — Terry Hope (RotoVision 2002 ISBN 288046689X)Residence (Netherlands)— Lilian Polderman - Steve Bloom interview — September 2008PDN / Photo District News (USA) - Diane Smyth — cover feature and interview - June 2008Born to be Wild - Rebecca Ley - Interview - The Times Magazine - October 28, 2006Photography in 100 Words - David Clark (Argentum ISBN 1902538579)
