Melanie Friend

From the mid-1980s Melanie Friend worked as a freelance photojournalist, producing photographs for magazines, newspapers (The Guardian, The Independent), the anti-nuclear movement, Greenpeace and other campaigns. In 1986 she became a member of Format Photographers, and also joined Panos Pictures in 1991. In the early 1990s she combined her photography with print journalism (freelance articles for The Guardian and The Times Educational Supplement among others) and freelance radio reporting (features for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service).

During the 1990s Friend started producing work specifically for galleries. The focus of her work at that time was Kosova/a and the human rights abuses carried out under the Milosevic regime, in the years leading up to the 1999 war. Her exhibition Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible was first shown at Camerawork, London in 1996 before touring internationally. Using sound and image, it used voiced testimonies of Kosova Albanians describing the violence carried out in their homes, together with images of homes and gardens where the violence had taken place. An accompanying publication of the same name, was produced with the financial support of the Arts Council of England.

Friend’s book No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo was published by Midnight Editions, USA, 2001 and was widely reviewed in the USA, UK and in Kosovo/a itself. The book included portraits of refugees (deportees) made in Macedonian refugee camps in 1999, and their stories; subsequent interviews were carried out after the refugees’ return home to Kosovo/a.

Her exhibition installation The Guide, which focused on the massacre site of Recak, was shown as part of her MA Photography exhibition at London College of Printing in 2000, and at the Hasselblad Center, Sweden in 2001. It used one image and a 17 minute soundtrack.

After the 12 years of mostly focusing on Kosovo/a, Friend continued to look at different aspects of war. Her solo exhibition Border Country, which used sound and image to focus on asylum seekers and migrants in detention in the UK, opened at Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast, in 2007 and toured; the complete show was last exhibited at Gallery 44, Toronto. In 2017 an edited version was shown as part of the System of Systems exhibition in Athens.

Her exhibition The Home Front, looking at the relationship between the military, marketing and entertainment, opened at Impressions Gallery as a solo show in September 2013 and then toured both within the UK and to USA & Canada. An accompanying publication, The Home Front, was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with Impressions Gallery, in October 2013.

Her latest book, The Plain, looking at the military landscape of Salisbury Plain, was published by Dewi Lewis in autumn 2020.

Friend obtained BAs in English and Related Literature (University of York, 1978), and Photography (Polytechnic of Central London 1988 – now University of Westminster). She gained an MA in Photography in 2000 from the London College of Printing (now University of the Arts, London). She was Reader in Photography, School of Media, Film & Music at University of Sussex, UK, from 2003 to 2019, and continues to give guests lectures about her own practice at various universities.

For more details on the background to each work, the curators, and more, please see Works, top menu of this website…

A selection of Friend’s photojournalistic work from the 1980s/90s is held by Report Digital info@reportdigital.co.uk, link here: https://www.reportdigital.co.uk/contributor/browse/269/melanie-friend

Negatives, prints and contacts sheets are held by the Bishopsgate Institute and are currently being catalogued (any enquiries, please contact Melanie directly on melaniefriendstudio@icloud.com).

Melanie Friend full C.V. updated October 2024

Summary C.V.

Education:

London Institute (London College of Printing) 1999-2000 part-time. MA in Photography. Polytechnic of Central London (1984-88, part-time): BA (CNAA) Photography. University of York (1975-78): BA in English & Related Literature.

Solo Publications (monographs):

The Plain, Dewi Lewis Publishing), forthcoming, October 2020.
The Home Front (Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with Impressions Gallery) 2013.
Border Country (Belfast Exposed Photography and The Winchester Gallery, 2007).
No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo (Midnight Editions, USA, 2001).
Homes and Gardens: Documenting the invisible (Camerawork, London 1996).

Selected Portfolios/Group Catalogues/Book Chapters published:

Spaces of War, War of Spaces (chapter, work in progress on The Plain), Bloomsbury, 2020. Photography & Culture, (Routledge) Vol 8, Issue 3, November 2015.
Gallery 44 catalogue, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, 2010.
‘Europe’ European Central Bank Annual Photography Award, 2008.
Ikon Gallery catalogue of international group show Claustrophobia, 1998.

Selected Group Exhibitions:

Women in Revolt (forthcoming) Tate Britain, 8 November 2023 – 2024 Re/Sisters (forthcoming), Barbican Art Gallery, London, 5 Oct 2023 – 14 Jan 2023 Landscape Trauma, Centre for British Photography, London, 8 June – 24 September 2023 Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, May-September, 2022. Photographing Protest: Resistance through a Feminist Lens, Four Corners, London, March-April 2022. Generation War, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles Country, USA, 2019.
A Green and Pleasant Land, Towner Art Gallery, UK, 2017/2018.
European Central Bank Annual Photography Award exhibitions, Cologne & Frankfurt, 2008.
National Portrait Gallery, London: John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, 2000.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Claustrophobia (international group touring show), 1998.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

The Home Front: (solo show):
Farleys Gallery, UK, 10 September to 29 October 2020
Ryerson Artspace, Toronto, Canada, 5 – 29 September 2018.
Gallery 310, School of Image Arts, University of Ryerson, Toronto, Canada 16 – 29 September 2018.
Sol Mednick Gallery, University of the Arts Philadelphia, USA, 31 October – 5 December 2017.
UH Galleries, Hatfield, 14 November 2014 – 31 January 2015.
DLI Museum and Art Gallery, Durham, 28 June – 21 September 2014.
Impressions Gallery, UK, 14 September – 23 November 2013.

Border Country:
Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, 2010.
The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, 2008.
Belfast Exposed Photography, Northern Ireland, 2008.
Hasselblad Centre, Sweden, 2001 (Homes and Gardens: Documenting the invisible).
National Portrait Gallery, London: John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, 2000.
Camerawork Gallery, London, 1996: Solo exhibition Homes and Gardens Toured UK 1996-98, and to Houston Center
for Photography (USA) 1998.

Collections

The Hyman Collection (British Photography).
Impressions Gallery Archive.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Science Museum Group (National Media Museum).

Recent Photo Awards & Nominations:

The Home Front was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2013 & 2014 and the Deutsche Börse Photographic Prize 2015. Nominated for Royal Photographic Society 100 Heroines by Impressions Gallery (Pippa Oldfield), Laura Noble and Helen Trompeteler.

Selected Recent Guest Lectures/talks: (for conference papers see full c.v. available below).

(Note: Reader in Photography in the School of Media, Film & Music at University of Sussex 2003-2019)

Royal Photographic Society, 2021. University of Basle, 2021. University of the Creative Arts, Farnham, 2020.
Hastings Photography Festival, Hastings, Sussex, 2018.
University of Napier, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2018.
School of Image Arts, University of Ryerson, Toronto, Canada, 2018.
University of the Arts Philadelphia, Philadelphia, USA, 2017.
University of Westminster, London, 2015 & 2016.
Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, 2014. University of South Wales, Newport, 2013.
North East Photography Series, Newcastle, 2013.
University of Ryerson, Toronto, Canada, 2010.
Centre for Transnational Research and Media Practice, Dublin, 2009.
University of Bern, Switzerland, 2008.
Oberlin College, Ohio, USA, 2007.
University of Oxford, UK, 2007.
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, 2002.

Reviews: The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), Financial Times (UK), Hotshoe International, Source (Northern Ireland), Creative Camera (UK), British Journal of Photography (UK), War & Media Network (Int), Aesthetica (UK), Photo Monitor (UK), Katalog (Denmark), Village Voice (USA), The Progressive (USA), Library Journal (USA), Spot (USA), Globe and Mail (Toronto), Black Flash (Canada). Interviews include: The Guardian, Dazed & Confused, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC World Service, WBur The Connection (Boston, USA).