Christopher Broadbent

Christopher Broadbent (born 1936) is a photographic artist whose romantic still lifes unfold with the drama and precision of cinema. After studying cinematography and photography at Paris’s Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC), he began his career in Rome shooting documentaries. He later moved to Milan to direct commercials, where he honed the meticulous composition and natural‑light techniques that now define his photographic work.

By the 1980s, Broadbent had found success shooting editorial and advertising campaigns in both Italy and the United States, earning numerous industry awards. His still‑life photographs are carefully staged and lit with available light, often using long exposures to heighten drama and expand tonal range. Each image feels like a suspended moment—a single frame in which a flower droops, the last rays of daylight fade through a window, or a tabletop remains uncleared in a solemn ode to the close of day.

Broadbent’s choice of humble, everyday objects lends his work a sense of memory and nostalgia. He arranges vessels, blossoms, fabrics, and candles with exacting attention to detail, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on transience and the quiet beauty of ordinary moments. His images evoke echoes of laughter and the fading warmth of company long departed, offering a contemplative space in which time seems to slow and the edge of light becomes an event in itself.

Now based in Milan, Broadbent’s recent exhibitions include Locandina Senigallia (2021–22), “Rimasto nell’Ombra” at Palazzo Baviera in Senigallia (2022), and “What’s Left” at Palazzo Parasi in Cannobio (2021). Through his elegant, cinematic still lifes, Christopher Broadbent continues to celebrate the poetry of everyday life and the subtle interplay of light, form, and mood.