John Novis

Biography

John Novis's photographic career started in London in the 1960’s when he began working as an assistant to many renowned photographers from Vogue, Apple Corps (Beatles), top fashion, advertising and industrial photographic studios. In the 1980's he worked primarily as a commercial freelance photographer during which time he completed at 3 year university ‘Creative Photography’ course under the direction of Thomas Joshua Cooper and Paul Hill. John became increasingly interested in turning his photographic skills into reportage and in 1989 he joined Greenpeace where he began working as a photographer and image adviser. This enabled him to highlight critical environmental situations using his photographs and to use his expertise for more ethical communication. John was made Head of Photography at Greenpeace International, and directed photo operations for the key campaign visual projects, such as: Amazon - illegal logging; Yunnan - the Chinese rice company; the Climate Crisis – the Drying of the Yellow River; Vanishing Everest Glaciers; Climate and Poverty in the Province of Gansu, China; The Production of Palm Oil in Indonesia's Riau province and recently Forest Solution projects. In 2001 he took three months off to work on his personal project – a testimony to the largest known Hindu pilgrimage, Khumb Mela. He also collaborated on many successful publications, including the nuclear industry in Russia by the Dutch photographer Robert Knoth and in 2005, the famous book Exposure (Bhopal): Portrait Of A Corporate Crime by Raghu Rai of Magnum Photos: Prince's Rainforest Project with Daniel Beltra. In addition, John organised photo master-classes for Greenpeace China in Beijing, worked on the jury CHIPP (China International Photojournalism Competition) in 2007 and was a member of the Fotopub jury in Slovenia in 2008. In 2009 John was also on the jury of the Czech Competition Štíty Viléma Heckla and later in the year guest speaker for Wild Photos at the Royal Geographic society. In 2012 John ran a photo workshop and curated a renewable energy exhibition at the Angkor Photo Festival in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Presently he is working on photo projects to prevent Arctic oil exploration, forest solutions, sustainable agriculture and climate impact stories.



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