Søren Solkær

Solkær's fourth book, SURFACE, with portraits of street artists and graffiti writers, was released by Gingko Press in 2015. His fifth book, Portraits 1993-2018 was released in 2018.

In late 2011, Solkær released his third book, Souls. Souls features portraits of meditating yogis taken on the top of Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India – the result of Solkær's seven journeys to the region. The project has been exhibited in New York, Oxford, Copenhagen, Milan, Naples, Bratislava and Reykjavík.

The CLOSER exhibition in Øksnehallen, Copenhagen was noteworthy for its scale – occupying over 24,000 square feet of exhibition space and featuring 327 images in formats up to 3x4.5 meters. The exhibition was largely praised by the Danish media and received a 'six out of six' rating from Politiken and was subsequently nominated for best Cultural Event 2009 by AOK.

Notably, Solkær's images are featured in the cover art for Franz Ferdinand's 2009 album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand as well as Stereophonics' seventh studio album Keep Calm and Carry On.

Solkær has released five photography books. Beat City (2006) documents his earlier work with musicians juxtaposed with cinematic city scapes from across the world whilst his followup, CLOSER (2011), is a hard-cover coffee table book containing 238 pages of portraits of musicians.

In the beginning of his artistic career, Søren teamed up with Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes on various projects, with Sune at one point accompanying him as his assistant on shoots. Søren was responsible for the strong visual tone of The Raveonettes from the early stages of their career, and he also made his music video directorial debut with "Beat City" – the second single released from The Raveonettes' Whip It On (2002) album. His collaboration with the band during the 1990s and 2000s marked his entry into the Danish music scene as a photographer of musicians.

In addition to his work with celebrities, between 1999 and 2009, Solkær photographed thousands of practitioners of Raja yoga meditation in Rajasthan, India. In 2009 he portrayed a large delegation of spiritual leaders at the UN Cop 15 Summit in Copenhagen. At Roskilde Festival in 2009 he built a studio in a shipping container and for 6 days, took photos of festivalgoers.

He was born in Sønderborg, Denmark. He completed a B.A. in Nordic Literature at Århus University, then later a B.A. in Photography at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in the Czech Republic. He established a studio in Copenhagen in 1996. When he married in 2001 took the surname Starbird from his American wife. After the marriage ended, Søren reverted to his birth name Søren Solkær.

Søren Solkær (born 3 September 1969 and formerly known as Søren Solkær Starbird), is a Danish photographer best known for his portraits of musicians. He is most recognised as the man responsible for various iconic images of Björk, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, David Lynch, Arctic Monkeys, R.E.M. and U2.