This post continues my portrait collaboration with Eva Elfie, exploring classical painting influences through contemporary photographic portraiture. The intention was not imitation, but translation—carrying the psychological and spiritual intensity of Baroque painting into a modern visual language.
Read MoreFor much of my life, British comedy has been a formative influence—not simply as entertainment, but as a lens through which human behaviour, discomfort, and contradiction are examined. Few creative forces shaped that understanding more profoundly than The League of Gentlemen. Its world of grotesque beauty, psychological unease, and pitch-black humour revealed that comedy could be as atmospheric and unsettling as it was funny—an approach that continues to inform my portrait practice today.
Read MoreCommissioned executive portrait photography in Los Angeles for CEOs, board members, investors, and institutional leaders. Authority-driven, cinematic power portraits created for governance, press, and legacy use worldwide.
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Reggimento Corazzieri – Rome Portrait Sittings (Rory Lewis Photographer 2018)
While revisiting my archive, I recently rediscovered a series of group portraits made in Rome in September 2018—photographs of the Reggimento Corazzieri, the elite cuirassiers of Italy and the ceremonial honour guard of the President of the Italian Republic.
Read MoreFew military specialists operate with greater restraint—or greater consequence—than the sniper. Trained to observe without detection, to wait without movement, and to act with absolute precision, snipers exist on the margins of visibility. Their presence is rarely acknowledged, yet their influence is profound.
Read MorePolitical portraiture is uniquely challenging. Unlike actors or artists who often arrive ready to reveal themselves, political figures carry the weight of office, legacy, and scrutiny. Their public image is choreographed, their private selves carefully protected. To photograph them is to navigate a space where power, perception, and personality intersect, requiring not only technical mastery but also an ability to draw out the humanity beneath the role. Over the years, I have worked with some of the most influential figures in modern public life—Tony Blair, John Major, Theresa May, David Cameron, and more recently Usha Vance, the Second Lady of the United States. Each sitting has presented its own complexities and quiet revelations.
Read MoreIl progetto Soldati della Repubblica, realizzato attraverso la Rory Lewis Non Profit, mi ha portato in viaggio attraverso l’Italia per ritrarre alcuni dei più storici e prestigiosi reggimenti di cavalleria: Nizza Cavalleria (1°), Lancieri di Novara (5°), Lancieri di Aosta (6°), Lancieri di Montebello (8°) e il Reggimento Corazzieri, guardia d’onore del Presidente della Repubblica.
Read MoreThe year 2025 marks a defining milestone in my career as a portraitist and in the mission of the Rory Lewis Non-Profit: the capture of four living British Field Marshals—an achievement unparalleled in contemporary photographic history. This body of work joins the organization’s latest acquisition, the Presentation Portrait of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig(1928), symbolically uniting the early twentieth-century imagery of command with its living successors nearly a century later.
Read MoreIn The Color of Money, Rory Lewis reimagines Ray Dalio as a modern-day Adam Smith — a philosopher of finance rendered in the tonal language of U.S. currency. The portrait’s subdued greenish hue evokes the moral and material weight of money, while its Caravaggio-inspired lighting captures Dalio suspended between shadow and illumination — intellect and introspection. Symbolizing a new era of economic thought, the image reflects Dalio’s 2022 reversal, “I no longer think cash is trash,” portraying him not merely as an investor, but as a thinker reshaping capitalism’s conscience. Blending fine art with corporate gravitas, the work positions Lewis at the intersection of aesthetic mastery and financial portraiture for the Fortune 500 age.
Read MoreRory Lewis Non-Profit presents a visual thesis uniting portraits of the last three Commanders of the Household Division — Lieutenant General Sir Ben Bathurst, Major General Sir Chris Ghika, and Major General James Bowder — each photographed at the historic Duke of Wellington’s desk inside Horse Guards, London.
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