‘A large part of my life’: a former Banksy associate sells his archive

After several tumultuous years, the former Banksy associate Steve Lazarides saw the writing on the wall. Between the challenges of the pandemic, the escalating cost of living, mental health struggles and a weighty financial setback from his now-defunct manufacturing company, Lazarides suddenly found himself longing to reclaim his first love, photography. To dedicate himself to his craft fully, he is selling his one-of-a-kind collection of Banksy artwork and artifacts. “This has been a large part of my life for the last 25 years, whether I was working with him or not,” Lazarides said over a Zoom call from London last week. “I just want it out of my in-tray and to go back to concentrating on taking photographs again.” It’s not that Lazarides hasn’t spent time behind the lens over the last two and a half decades. In 2019 he published Banksy Captured, a behind the scenes chronicle of Banksy as told through Lazarides’s photos and anecdotes, followed by a second volume a year later. Still, Lazarides says: “I never got the time to put into photography that I really wanted to so that’s where I’m at now. I’m also currently editing through a couple hundred thousand images that I...