Steve Lazarides and Banksy: Behind the Lens of Street Art’s Greatest Mystery
Every great artist has a witness. For Banksy, that witness was Steve Lazarides. Once a photographer from Newcastle with an eye for subcultures, Lazarides became Banksy’s first chronicler, collaborator, and unlikely agent. Together, they staged not only artworks but interventions, guerrilla gestures, pop-up infiltrations, and acts of cultural sabotage.
Steve Lazarides – How To Paint Graffiti & Get Away With It – available framed / unframed
The First Click
The partnership began almost by accident. In 1997, while working for Sleazenation, Lazarides was commissioned to photograph a stencil artist from Bristol. The resulting images were not conventional portraits and they marked the beginning of a decade-long relationship. From that moment, Lazarides’ camera became the silent witness to the making of a myth.
Steve Lazarides – Photo Op – available framed / unframed
Though exact models remain uncertain, Lazarides is believed to have worked with Nikon film cameras of the late 1990s, tools prized for their robustness in low-light, fast-moving environments. His negatives captured not only murals but also the fleeting theatre of their creation: night, spray, stencil, flight.
Steve Lazarides – St. Werburgh- available framed / unframed
The Role of a Co-Conspirator
It is tempting to view Lazarides simply as Banksy’s documentarian, but his role was far more complex. He was:
- Photographer: creating an archive of over 12,000 images of Banksy and his works.
- Agent and Fixer: smoothing logistics for guerrilla installations, from covert museum drops to audacious public stunts.
- Publisher and Promoter: co-founding Pictures on Walls, the collective that released Banksy’s early prints, democratising access to street art editions.
- Gallerist: later establishing his own platforms to legitimise street art within the white walls of the contemporary gallery.
If Banksy was the masked auteur, Lazarides was the stage manager, part facilitator, part archivist, always close enough to see the work born, but never close enough to betray its mystery.
Steve Lazarides – Ape Rule- available framed / unframed
The Archive as Art
Lazarides’ archive claimed to span over 100,000 images, with Banksy comprising its most coveted tranche of 12,000, is itself a work of art history. The photographs resist revelation: they show a hand, a hoodie, a stencil laid against brick. Always intimate, never fully unmasking. Published in the Banksy Captured volumes, and turned into limited edition prints they are “secondary relics of primary acts.”
Steve Lazarides – Inebriated Wisdom- available framed / unframed
Separation, Silence, and Legacy
By 2008, the relationship fractured. The reasons remain as hidden as Banksy’s identity. Lazarides has only called the split “unexplained.” Lazerides founded Laz Inc. Gallery, staged immersive exhibitions with big names such as Invader, and continued to celebrate the margins of culture. Always, however, the shadow of Banksy looms, his former collaborator a global phantom, his photographs still the closest the world has come to an unveiled truth.
Steve Lazarides – Unforgettable You- available framed / unframed
The ultimate Question
Like all good mysteries, the Lazarides x Banksy story leaves us with more questions than answers, with the ultimate question… Will the public ever see Banksy’s face? The fascination lies in the spectacle, in the market, in the cultural history. But for audiences everywhere, Lazarides’ photographs are less about unmasking Banksy, and more about preserving the chaos and uncertainty that has always been part of his art.
Steve Lazarides – Streets of Rage- available framed / unframed
In the frame
In the end, Steve Lazarides’ greatest photograph may not be one he ever took… but the framing of a myth itself. Through his lens, Banksy was not revealed, but constructed: a figure at once anonymous and omnipresent, outlaw and icon, prankster and prophet. Street art, once ephemeral, became eternal. And Lazarides, camera in hand, ensured that the world would never look away.
Steve Lazarides – Balloon Fight (Flight)- available framed / unframed
Capture history
Lazarides’ artworks are available to view in the gallery and via our store online. These signed photograph prints, drawn from his decade alongside Banksy, offer a rare chance to engage with the visual record of street art’s most mythic figure.
In addition, a limited number of signed Paper cover editions of Banksy Captured Volumes 1 and 2 are also available. Together, they form both a personal memoir and an unprecedented chronicle, a window into the years when anonymity, subversion, and artistry collided on city walls and in the lens of a photographer who was there to document the elusive artist during his early years.
Steve Lazarides – Banksy Captured Vol. 1 & Vol. 2
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