Johnnie Shand Kydd became a photographer in 1995 after working as an art dealer in Bond Street, London for many years. A close friend of a group of artists who became known as the YBA’s – Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, et al – Shand Kydd took to carrying a point and shoot camera with him at all times, recording both the studio work and late-night socializing of the artists. This body of work resulted in the publication of Spitfire (Thames & Hudson, 1997) and a commission in the same year to take portraits of the artists for the catalogue of the groundbreaking Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. Shand Kydd published a further volume of portraits, Crash (Damiani, 2006).

Shand Kydd then turned his attention to the Italian city of Naples, the last great pagan city in Europe. He published Siren City (Other Criteria, 2009) which incorporated a decade of Neapolitan Street photography. An exhibition of the Naples photographs was shown at Madre, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples and then at the Estorick Collection in London. Whilst in Naples, Shand Kydd contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues published by Madre, notably those devoted to the work of Jeff Koons, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor.

Shand Kydd has contributed to numerous magazines, including Vogue, Harpers, and AnOther, and has directed many films for the website Nowness.