Born in South Africa and educated in England, Paul Yule discovered photography at an early age after stumbling upon a darkroom in the attic of his London home. His passion for photojournalism eventually took him to Peru, where his encounter with the work of Martín Chambi led him into documentary filmmaking. His films have examined the ways societies construct stories about themselves — subjects have included apartheid, censorship, fascism, war, religion and historical memory. His later work has increasingly turned that same gaze inward towards family, loss, memory and identity.

Documentaries

Yule has directed and produced more than 30 films for the BBC, Channel 4 and other international broadcasters. Work has received international recognition, including an Emmy Award, several Royal Television Society awards, an Amnesty International Prize and an Edward R. Murrow Award.

His first film, Martin Chambi and the Heirs of the Incas (1986) was a documentary about the iconic Peruvian photographer made for the BBC’s Arena strand. Trains That Passed in the Night (1990), for Channel 4, was about the great American photographer of steam, O. Winston Link, whose troubled personal story he returned to more than a decade later in The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover (2005). Damned in the USA became the subject of a landmark legal case in the United States, establishing an important precedent in the defence of artistic freedom. (Lou Reed re-wrote the lyrics to his classic Walk on the Wild Side in support of the case.)

Other films include Battle for the Holocaust, The House of War, The Basil D’Oliveira Conspiracy, White Lies, Waiting for Armageddon, Good Morning Mr. Hitler!, In The Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin, Elgar’s Tenth Muse and Cricket In Beirut.

Photography

While studying at Oxford between 1975 and 1978 he photographed the early theatre work of Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and others of their generation. In 1979 he travelled to Peru for the first time as a photojournalist. That experience led to The New Incas (1983), a book of his photographs, and curatorial work on the photographer Martín Chambi for The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

His books of photojournalism have drawn on a substantial archive built over a lifetime of looking and recording. My Developing Eye  is a retrospective of his photography, while the recent Portraits and Demons focusses on portraiture and sculpture.