Derry Moore is known for his images of gardens, houses, and architectural interiors and also for his portraits. His photographs have been reproduced in numerous magazines including Architectural Digest, Vogue, Town and Country, Men's Vogue and Nest and has published over a dozen books, notably Evening Ragas: A Photographer in India, The Dream Come True (Great Houses of Los Angeles), The Englishman's Room, Rooms, Inside the House of Lords, Great Gardens of Italy and An English Room and Horses: Portraits by Derry Moore. His most recent book is In the Shadow of the Raj, which was published by Prestel in 2017.
He attended Oscar Kokoschka's School of Seeing in Salzburg, (Die Schule des Sehens), which he says "opened his eyes". Later, when living in New York, he came across two books, a book of Atget's photographs and Bill Brandt's A Night in London. It was these books that were decisive in his becoming a photographer and he went on to become Brandt's pupil. He began his professional career in 1971.
He has worked in Europe, America, Australia and India, a country that he first visited as a photographer in 1976 and where he photographed some of the palaces and people that seemed to him to have retained the atmosphere of another era and were in danger of disappearing
As well as many private collections, his work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The National Portrait Gallery, London, which has 38 of his portraits in their collection. In 2005, Moore's portraiture was the focus of a small retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, which featured his photographs of Helena Bonham Carter, John Gielgud, Rudolf Nureyev, Alan Bennett, David Bowie and the late Princess of Wales, amongst others.