Jamie-James Medina

Jamie-James Medina was born in London and spent his formative years in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where his father worked as a specialist in tropical medicine — a childhood displacement that seeded the outsider's eye and documentary instinct running through his later work. He returned to the UK at fifteen and, with striking speed, became the youngest staff photographer at The Observer, cutting his teeth on hard news and portraiture before he was out of his teens.

That reportage sensibility never left him. In 2010 he unveiled American Music Legends, an elegiac portrait series of the last surviving giants of rock 'n' roll, blues, jazz and country — Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Etta James and Pinetop Perkins among them. He followed it with The Tourist, a limited-edition newsprint publication launched with candid images shot on tour with The xx. His access-driven, empathetic style has carried him from intimate portraits of Lady Gaga in India for The Observer to the campaign trails of Bernie Sanders and the Clintons.

Medina's move into moving image followed naturally from his editorial eye. He directed the 2011 video for Jamie xx & Gil Scott-Heron's “I'll Take Care Of U” and King Krule's “The Noose of Jah City”, establishing an aesthetic built on restraint, tension and physicality — qualities that define a body of work threaded with boxing, VHS grain and intimate studio setups.

Videos such as King Krule's “A Lizard State”, Iggy Pop's “American Valhalla” — splicing 1963 boxing footage with model Ruth Bell — and Sampha's “(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano” cemented his reputation as a director who treats the music video as a compressed short film rather than a promotional artefact.

Beyond the camera he has built a parallel career as a tastemaker and impresario. In 2012 he founded Hot Charity, a Bronx-based independent label distributed by XL Recordings, releasing Willis Earl Beal's Acousmatic Sorcery and RATKING's WIKI93 EP, and he is credited as executive producer on Cerebral Ballzy's debut album.

As a creative consultant his ideas have shaped campaigns for XL Recordings — where he served as Head of Innovation — as well as YouTube Music and NIKE, working alongside FKA twigs to build the Believe In More campaign. He continues to work across photography, film and creative direction between London and New York.