China 1986 (Café Royal Books, to be published on 18 October) has just been featured in Observer New Review/The Guardian:
I’ve started making new work in East Anglia. And I’ve been busy preparing two Café Royal books for publication. And I’ve been interviewed at length about The Plain. All good stuff. More details soon…!
I’ve had very memorable times at Tate Britain, meeting up with the women from Dorset and London I photographed for my 1988 image + text series Mothers’ Pride, which is currently on show in the groundbreaking show Women in Revolt! curated by Linsey Young (see November 2023 post for more info). See image of the Mothers’ Pride series on the wall below (Room 6 at the Tate). I am really proud it is included in this show (alongside Greenham images from Format Photographers, see November post).
It’s been an extraordinary time these past two years, reconnecting with the women from Mothers’ Pride to ensure they were happy that their portrait and interview texts were in this show. Some names have been concealed; the work was made originally for very small audiences, well before the arrival of social media, etc.
I’m very delighted that The Hyman Collection have acquired two of my prints from my 2020 series The Plain which were shown recently in the Centre for British Photography’s show Landscape Trauma (see below).
Really enjoyed my visit to MPF in Bristol on 5 December, when I did a talk to coincide with the MPF acquiring prints from my series The Home Front!
Great to meet all the team and the Bristol audience. I had excellent questions from the audience after my talk and very interesting chats with photographers during the book signings…
It’s been a very exciting last few weeks, with the opening of the Women in Revolt! exhibition at the Tate Britain (Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain) and the display of large prints by Format Photographers (Second Sight: Format Photographers, 1983-2003) in the public concourse at the Barbican Centre (which runs till 14 January), and a large body of work on Greenham peace protests in the Re/Sisters Barbican exhibition (Re/Sisters exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery) .
The photographs below of one of the Re/Sisters gallery spaces with a distant view of the Format display of Greenham peace camp photographs (on the back wall) are courtesy of Max Colson/Barbican (© Max Colson). (I took the close-up). Very happy that three of my early 1980s Greenham photographs have been included here.
On the top level of the Second Sight Format display at Barbican foyer below, is a photograph I took of ambulance women at work at a road traffic accident in Holborn, 1989 (I had spent two days with this team, riding in the ambulance, documenting their work) ; at the lower level, is a photograph I took in St. Martin’s Lane very close to the poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square of 31 March 1990. Tourists who had been shopping at HMV in Oxford Street arrived at this scene to find a car on fire in the background.
The remaining images pictured here are by Format photographers Brenda Prince and Maggie Murray.
The second and third photos of the Format installation Second Sight below are courtesy of Jackson Pearce White/Barbican (© Jackson Pearce White).
The Tate Britain show: Format has a large number of protest photographs (including two of mine from Greenham Common early 1980s in the image below (thanks to Maggie Murray for the pic), and an anti-racist protest in Glasgow) included in the Tate show.
I also have a 1988 image & text series I made on teenage mothers (Mothers’ Pride) on show in the last room of the exhibition. This was actually my final creative project for my BA Photography (1984-88, part time) which was in my degree show at the Polytechnic of Central London. It’s incredible that it is now on show in the Tate; it was last shown in 1990, I think, at the Cambridge Darkroom and at Bath F-Stop Gallery, following its inclusion in the 1988 Spectrum Women’s Photography Festival. On 7 November, at the Tate Britain opening, it was a very moving experience, as three of the London women were able to come to the opening and see their younger selves on the wall. It’s been an extraordinary past 18 months re-connecting with the 8 women I had photographed back in 1988, all now in their 50s. The Tate show is on until 7 April 2024.
It’s great to see three new titles from Café Royal Books of work by Format Photographers, including a solo publication by Brenda Prince. The images in the other two titles are a selection of work from the Format Photographers Agency collection in the Bishopsgate Institute archives.
Link here: Café Royal Books by Format Photographers
On the front cover of Women, Work and Equality 1975-95 is a photograph I took of a London ambulance crew at work in 1989. I remember that assignment very well; a freelance journalist and I spent two full days with the ambulance crew (with the permission of the management and the union), to highlight their crucial work. In late 1989 and 1990 ambulance workers were intermittently on strike in a dispute over pay. The image shows a man on the ground who had been injured during a traffic accident. (I took the photograph after a conversation with his friend and the crew, after being assured that his injuries were not critical, and his life was not in danger). The photograph was published as part of a feature in the Independent Saturday magazine, and also used by the unions on some of their protest placards.
I’m also very happy to have three of my photographs reproduced in the Format Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1982–85 book.
In connection with Format’s work at Greenham Common, and the display of work by Format in the current Barbican show Re/Sisters (curated by Alona Pardo), I am joining Format members Maggie Murray and Joanne O’Brien for a discussion chaired by Dr. Noni Stacey at the Barbican on 26 October. This is part of an afternoon and evening of talks, as part of the Re/Sisters talks programme Joyful Militancy and Protest:
Joyful Militancy and Protest talks, 26 October, Barbican
Melanie Friend on left, Dr. Pippa Oldfield, centre, at the Centre for British Photography 19 September 2023, photo © Maggie Murray.
20 September: Photo from the ‘in conversation’ event last night at the Centre for British Photography, with thanks to Maggie Murray who took the pic. Many thanks to CBP for the invitation, and to all those who attended for all the excellent questions in the Q&A…
12 September: I’m ‘in conversation’ next week at London’s Centre for British Photography, with Dr. Pippa Oldfield, photography curator & author of Photography and War (Reaction Books, 2019). Pippa is the former Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery and is currently Senior Lecturer in Photography at Teeside University. Looking forward to seeing Pippa again, and the CBP team … and to meeting other photographers - and whoever else might be there! It’s 6-8pm, booking details and info here:
Centre for British Photography, Events page
This autumn Format Photography Agency’s work on the peace movement and the 1980s protests at RAF Greenham Common (including some of my photographs), will be shown in two large London group exhibitions: Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology at the Barbican (5 October 2023 through to 14 January 2024) and Women in Revolt! Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970–1990 at the Tate Britain (8 November 2023 to 7 April 2024). It’s been such an amazing time working with the curators, with Format and with the Bishopsgate Institute (which holds the Format archive) during this past year.
I’m also very excited to be showing my 1988 image and text work Mothers’ Pride, as part of the Tate Britain show; this piece of work hasn’t been shown for well over three decades and was originally my final year project for my BA photography at the Polytechnic of Central London! more soon on this ...
More info here
Re/Sisters at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain
I’m very excited that images from two of my works (The Plain and Border Country) have been included in the new Landscape Trauma show, curated by James Hyman. This is one of several exhibitions opening at the Centre for British Photography on 8 June and running till 24 September… More soon!
New shows at Centre for British Photography June 2023
Very happy to have my photographs included in the current display celebrating work by Format photographers at the wonderful Bishopsgate Institute, near Liverpool Street, celebrating 40 years since Format women’s photography agency was set up in 1983. (Proud to have been a member of Format from 1986!). This runs till 31 August.
Format Photographers display at Bishopsgate Institute
More of Format’s photographs will be included in two large group shows in London this autumn, details to come…
Format’s collection is held in the Bishopsgate archives; my own collection has also found a home at BI and is being catalogued. The webpage here is in development, more material will be added later this year.
My own webpage on the Bishopsgate website
At the start of April, the spring print issue of O’r Pedwar Gwynt, the Welsh-language review of books, published a feature on my book No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo (Midnight Editions, USA, 2001). I’m delighted to have had my work featured in this journal. Written by Diane Bailey, the article was accompanied by three photographic portraits of Kosovar refugees that I took in Neprosteno refugee camp in 1999.
This Pleasant Land: New Photography of the British Landscape, is now out! I’m really pleased that several images from my 2013 work The Home Front (published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with Impressions Gallery) have been selected for this beautifully produced book, published by Hoxton Mini Press, which ‘looks at the ‘new terrains, memories and myths’ of the contemporary British landscape. Excellent texts by Rosalind Jana.
For the list of all the 24 photographers included in the book, more info, and to order, see:
https://www.hoxtonminipress.com/collections/books/products/this-pleasant-land
Busy sorting out the remainder of my archive right now, to add to my archive (Melanie Friend archive at Bishopsgate Institute). I am also occupied trying to contact women I photographed back in 1988 for my exhibition Mothers’ Pride, which focused on teenage/young mothers. Re-connecting isn’t that easy, as we originally communicated by letter and landline. And after 34 years, some have, unsurprisingly, moved house/flat! This work will be re-shown next year in a group show in London, which is very exciting, more news soon…
It’s great that part of the exhibition Photographing Protest: Resistance through a Feminist Lens that was held in the spring at Four Corners gallery in Bethnal Green, London has transferred to the Workers’ Gallery in Porth in Wales. People Power (Pwer Pobl) is on till 22 December, and includes some photographs (inc one of mine from Greenham 1985) from the Format collection at the Bishopsgate Archives. Very happy to be in this show, only sorry I wasn’t able to travel to Wales to see it…
I was very saddened by the death of Ian Jack on 28 October (see https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/31/no-journalist-had-a-deeper-sense-of-history-six-essential-ian-jack-works among other tributes to him in The Guardian). I first met him 20 years ago when he wrote a short piece (‘blurb’) for the back cover of my book No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo. He was a kind and wonderful man, and a remarkable writer. I have just re-read his moving piece about his father Finished with Engines in The Granta Book of the Family, and I remember his 2010 long read Five Boys: The Story of a Picture as an incredibly insightful piece about Jimmy Simes’ well-known photograph, which delves deeply into the complexity of the stories behind and beyond this photo. It was published by 1843 magazine (the Economist) available here:
Five Boys: The Story of a Picture by Ian Jack
I was shocked and saddened to hear of the unexpected death of Eamonn McCabe on 2 October, an excellent photographer and award-winning Guardian picture editor (see obituary in The Guardian). He was always very supportive to me and many other freelance photographers who worked with The Guardian. Back in the 1980s/1990s, you could meet with a picture editor face-to-face, pitching up with a box of prints for them to whisk through. Eamonn was always kind, and curious, despite being under pressure.
I was a speaker at the Eye Festival in Aberystwyth on 8 October (which Eamonn McCabe had been involved with), and really enjoyed the whole weekend. It felt great to be back in a photography environment again, with a very engaged audience. Thanks to the Eye, and Glenn Edwards for inviting me to be part of it.
Great to attend the private view on 6 October of Radical Landscapes at the Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre (above, left). The original exhibition was at the Tate Liverpool during the summer (Tate curator: Darren Pih) before travelling to Warwick. The show’s on at the Mead till 18 December. Above (centre) shows the grid of photographs of peace protests from the Format Photography Archive (held at Bishopsgate Institute) on the wall of the Mead Gallery, with a photo I took of women protestors at Greenham Common in 1985.. The Greenham Common banner above (centre pic) is by Thalia Campbell.
While in Coventry, I also saw the exhibition Grown Up in Britain: 100 Years of Teenage Kicks (1 July 2022 – 12 February 2023) at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. Very happy to be part of the protest photography section, which included projected images from a range of photographers. Two of my black and white photographs (1983 & 1985) showing women protestors from Greenham Common are on display, bottom left of the images below, thanks to Report Digital photo agency. These photographs are both in the Report Digital photo library and my archive at the Bishopsgate Institute, London.
An edited, digital version of Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible was included in a multi-touch installation of works by a variety of international artists to accompany an exhibition of work in Luxembourg by artist Frans Masereel. If you Wish for Peace (30 April – 14 August 2022) was shown at the Musée National de la Résistance et des Droits Humain at Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg. Thanks to Henrik Elburn for the image taken below at the exhibition.June - July 2022
Image copyright: Henrik Elburn
In the end, got up to see Radical Landscapes in early August.
Looking forward very much to the presentations at the Radical Landscapes symposium in Liverpool 8/9 July, which sounds right up my street. And very happy that two of my peace protest photographs from the 1980s (including one from Greenham Common) have been included in this show, from the Format collection at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Also pleased to have a couple of 1980s protest photos included in the exhibition Grown Up In Britain - 100 Years Of Teenage Kicks, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, 2022-23, thanks to Report Digital.
Delighted that my works Border Country and Homes & Gardens: Documenting the Invisible (1996) are both mentioned in the new book just published by Gerry Badger, Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson, 2022). An image from Border Country, taken at the Colnbrook immigration detention centre, is also reproduced in the book.
I’ve been busy with my archive and also getting back to attending photo events, the first time since the pandemic began. I went up to Milton Keynes to see the excellent show by Ingrid Pollard, Carbon Slowly Turning, and attended the 6 May Carbon Slowly Turning: Movement, Energy, Landscape Conference. Also great to hear the authors’ talks at the recent launch at Birkbeck College, London, of a new series of landscape books, Photography, Place, Environment (Routledge), edited by Liz Wells (Professor Emeritus at Plymouth).
I’m involved with a few group exhibitions this winter/spring which is exciting….
I have been busy liaising with the Musée National de la Résistance et des Droits Humains in Luxembourg. An edited, digital version of my 1996 work on Kosovo/a, Homes & Gardens: Documenting the Invisible (first shown at Camerawork Gallery, London) will be shown as part of the group show If You Wish for Peace, opening at the end of April.
I have two images from mid 1980s peace protests (including Greenham Common) being shown as part of the exhibition Radical Landscapes, at Tate Liverpool.
And one of my photographs from a 1985 anti nuclear protest at Greenham Common has been included in an inspiring show documenting protest across five decades: Photographing Protest: Resistance through a Feminist Lens at Four Corners in Bethnal Green, London 18 March – 30 April. This show includes a large number of Format photography agency photographs; I’m proud to have been a member of Format from the mid 1980s until when it closed down in 2003.
I’ve continued to work on my new project The Lacquer Box and The Field Gun on Salisbury Plain – still photographs as well as a sound/image piece. This is a slow, in-depth project. I’m finding it intriguing! More anon…
I have also started, with the help of the brilliant Louise Harman, to sort out my black and white photojournalistic archive with a view to putting many more images online. Watch this space…
30 June Delighted that one of my The Home Front images + article has been published online in the E-Crini (University of Nantes, France) Journée d’études “The American and British Nations in Contemporary Landscape Photography” http://www.crini.univ-nantes.fr/1467114057832/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=1467100042469
22 June I was invited by Dr. Pratap Rughani, documentary film maker and MA Course leader at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, to discuss the ‘fine cut’ of my gallery piece/film Standing By with MA Filmmaking. This is a very personal piece about my parents, shortly to go out into the world. Very interesting morning…
As I’m a mentor for FOTODOCUMENT, I made my first contact with the photographer Ana Caroline de Lima, who won one of the FOTODOCUMENT commissions. Looking forward to seeing the results of her work!
8-10 June returned to Dublin to see the excellent DIT BA Photography Degree show held at Gallery of Photography, Dublin, and review the work as external examiner. Again, a wonderful visit to DIT & Dublin.
27 May Much enjoyed meeting Ziortza Fernandez Ibbareche at University of Westminster, and being one of the judges for the Migrants: What does Migration mean to you? exhibition, which was then shown at Gallery on the Corner, Battersea.
Spent a good deal of time on Salisbury Plain, getting immersed in my new project – interviewing, stills, ambient audio, transcribing.
4 May I was on the judging panel for FOTODOCUMENT, in London, to select photographers for the commissions ‘Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Worldwide’. A wonderful day, and a really great project.
Excited that, finally, my portfolio of eight The Home Front images plus article has been published in Photography & Culture , online version, Taylor & Francis/Routledge (USA) – print version to come…
10-12 March I visited Dublin as external examiner, and met students & staff on the BA Photography at Dublin Institute for Technology (DIT). Had a brilliant time…
After my initial research trip last August, I returned to Salisbury Plain during wild & windy weather. I’ve started to get to know the landscape & am setting up interviews with local people.
On 15 February, I was invited by Rupert Cox at the University of Manchester to give a Guest Lecture on my photography (& use of sound) to MA students in the Anthropology Dept. Had a brilliant time and enjoyed reconnecting with Rupert, an anthropologist/sound artist interested in sensory ethnography (see his fascinating work Air Pressure, made with Angus Carlyle).
18 February I gave a talk about my photography at the City Literary Institute (City Lit) in London, invited by Shirley Read. Much enjoyed re-connecting with Shirley & meeting the photography students there.
I’m going to give a talk about my work at University of Gloucestershire on Monday, 7 December. Looking forward to seeing artist/lecturer Anthony Lam again, and to meeting the students there. It’ll be good to be back – I was last there 7 years ago! I also have several guest lectures coming up in 2016.
Over the past few months I have been making the final tweaks to my piece Standing By. This personal sound/image piece focuses on the 60-year relationship between my parents (both born in the 1920s), focusing on their use of the crossword. It’s intimate, and, I hope, humorous. It also looks at traditional gender roles, class, old age and, fleetingly, Alzheimers.
It’s a 26 min piece, using soundtracks recorded between 2000 and 2007. It includes 67 still images.
The photographs were taken over an 11 year period, (2000-11), mostly as family snaps, and they come from a range of sources: Lumix (digital), i-phone 3, Leica (35mm film) and medium format film (Mamiya 7). I have also included 1950s images from my parents’ wedding and honeymoon album.
I’ve presented the work at recent conferences (work in progress at the 2010 Journal of Media Practice conference, and a close-to-final version at the Family Ties Network Public and Personal Archives: Creative Negotiations in April 2014). However the completed piece will be experienced as an installation piece in a gallery or other public space. I’m not putting it on You-Tube or uploading it to my website, but plan for it to go out in 2017/18. I’m currently talking with curators…
As usual it’s been a really busy summer at the university. In June I was also part of the panel judging the FotoDocument One Planet Living photographic competition.
On 15 May I had a fun trip up to Liverpool where 12 images from The Home Front were included in the opening night programme for LOOK/15: Exchange, the biennial Liverpool International Photography Festival, at Tate Liverpool, organised by Anna Fox.
I am now External Examiner for the BA Photography at DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology), so until 2018 I’m spending a few days in Dublin each year. Great to meet the staff & students there…
I’ve started researching a new long-term project, UK based, which is exciting. I’ll be carrying out the bulk of the photography and interviews for it during 2016/17. More soon!
It’s been such a hectic few months at Sussex, but tomorrow I am picking up the reins of my personal (& very long term) sound/still image project about my parents, Standing By. It’s almost done; I’ll make the final tweaks this summer and hope to start putting the work out there before long…
I gave a Guest Lecture at University of Westminster on 25 March, and had a lovely time meeting a really interesting range of students there. Am looking forward to their Degree Show in August. I felt moved returning to the institution where I had studied for my own BA Photography, when it was called Polytechnic of Central London (just a decade or two back!). I am still close friends with six fellow students…
Had a brilliant time in Nantes on 27 March where I was presenting The Home Front at a workshop organised by Julie Morère et Jane Bayly, CRINI research centre:
“Representations of Power and Power of the Image in British and American Contemporary Photography”
http://www.crini.univ-nantes.fr/1422002756341/0/fiche___actualite/&RH=1214467812585
Intriguing papers & fun time that evening, hope to return. Great to be able to get there by train too.
Great to be included in The Hyman Collection, British Photography website launched in mid February. See britishphotography.org
Photos from The Home Front opening reception at UH gallery last week – Thur 4th Dec. I really enjoyed this; the gallery space is inspiring, and it was a relaxed evening. Many of the visitors had interesting & incisive comments. I’ll be meeting one visitor again in January, to hear more about her childhood WWII memories evoked by the beach images. I am planning to keep an eye on the UH Galleries programme in future; it’s an easy hop from north London.Thanks to Matthew Shaul, Annabel Lucas and all the gallery team, and also to Louise Harman and Lesley Lawson for the photos. Sadly Pippa Oldfield, the curator of the original Impressions exhibition of The Home Front, was busy installing a new show in Bradford and couldn’t make it but was there in spirit…
Photograph by Lesley Lawson
from left to right: Mark Pettit & Paul Davies of UH Gallery team, me, Matthew Shaul, UH Gallery Head of Programme & curator
Photographs by Louise Harman
Delighted that The Home Front publication was nominated (‘long list’) for the Deutsche Börse Photographic Prize 2015.
I’m very much looking forward to the UH Galleries show of The Home Front, which opens on 14 November. The opening reception has been confirmed for Thursday 4 December, 6-8pm, and I’ll be doing an artist’s talk at 7pm. Only a short journey from Kings Cross so I hope to see some Londoners there (and Herts people too, of course!). It’ll be at the Hatfield gallery, see www.herts.ac.uk/artsandgalleries
On Monday 20 October I had a wonderful time at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia campus. Academic/curator Dr. Ferdinand de Jong of UEA had invited me to talk about my 2007 work Border Country, which focused on UK immigration detainees, alongside Dr. Benedetta Rossi, whose talk was entitled ‘Departures, Crossroads, and Ways of Moving in the longue durée of African History’. The talks were set up to accompany the opening reception for two new exhibitions Points of Departure: Photography of African Migrations & Crossroads of Empires: Archaeology in West Africa. Moving exhibitions, on till the end of January, and stunning space.
Writing this as about to go off email and social media for a fortnight – my summer holiday in Wales… it’ll be great.
I really enjoyed my second trip up to Durham this year for The Business of War Photography conference organised by Impressions curator Pippa Oldfield and University of Durham academic Tom Allbeson. The first day of the conference took place in Durham Art Gallery where The Home Front is on show. Stimulating papers, and some great times with colleagues. I’ll post more on this when I’m back from holiday…
It’s been a good month. The Home Front was featured in the British Journal of Photography’s thought-provoking August issue This is War. The show in UH galleries (University of Hertfordshire) in Hatfield, was confirmed, so The Home Front is coming south! It’s organised by Impressions Gallery, as HF is an Impressions touring show. The UH exhibition will open on 14 Nov 2014 and run through to 31 Jan 2015. I’ll be doing an artist’s talk at the reception which will be held on Thursday 4 December…
More updates on my return from holiday mid September.
Well three months have gone by and no time for an update. Till now!
Forthcoming, 31 July
So… I’m looking forward to the Business of War Photography conference up in Durham at the end of this month part of which will be held in the gallery space where The Home Front is showing (DLI Museum & Art Gallery till 21 September…). Some very interesting paper titles, check out the link to the conference programme here: https://www.dur.ac.uk/mlac/news/warphotoconf/programme/
On 21 July I had a very moving meeting at the Wellcome café with my Kosovar friend Edita, who was visiting London. We hadn’t met for 12 years but had stayed in touch on email; I first met her when she was in the refugee camp in Neproshten in Macedonia. I photographed & interviewed her for my book No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo and then she began to translate for me – and became a sensitive interpreter for other interviewees in the book. In the café memories started to flood back of the very moving times we had spent together in 1999/2000 in Macedonia & Kosova, and the extraordinary connections with the individuals in my book. I am looking forward to going back to Kosova before too long.
On 10/11 July I had a fun time at the SEAS Beyond The View: (New) Perspectives on Seaside Photography conference in Canterbury and Margate. Some fascinating papers & great keynotes. An engaging & friendly conference, thanks to Karen Shepherdson and her colleagues from Canterbury Christ Church University. I spoke about The Home Front and really enjoyed sharing the Panel II session with Lewis Bush who I know from Twitter (@LewisKayBush) and Martin Newth (@martinnewth). I’d been given Martin’s intriguing book Sentinel by Impressions curator Pippa Oldfield last year…
Went up to Durham for The Home Front opening at Durham Art Gallery, which is housed above the Durham Light Infantry Museum. Great to meet Durham curator Lucy Jenkins and the other exhibiting artists, & see Impressions curator Pippa Oldfield again, and friends from Sunderland: Arabella Plouviez, Pete Fryer & Carol McKay. Fun evening out with Pippa and the other exhibiting artists. Very happy with the ‘hang’.
©Pippa Oldfield. Thanks Pippa! The Home Front,
Durham Art Gallery (DLI Museum & Art Gallery).
Pippa Oldfield (left) and I on opening night.
©Donna-Lisa Healy, thanks…
On 16 June I spoke at an evening event Politics in Focus: A Discussion of Photography and Politics at Birkbeck college, UCL, with photographers Martin Argles and Carlos Reyes Manzo. Organised by Dermot Hodson, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at Birkbeck.I’d not seen Martin for about 20 years. I also remember meeting Carlos on a couple of demonstrations in the 1980s when I was a young photojournalist. So, quite incredible to re-connect. Intriguing to see their work and to hear thoughts from the audience.
12/13 June I spoke about The Home Front at the Sensing War conference, organised by Kevin McSorley of Portsmouth university. In a different world here, of sociologists engaged with war. Some excellent papers and plenty of food for thought.
Since my stint as one of the judges of the FotoDocument One-Planet Living commissions, I have enjoyed acting as ‘artistic mentor’ to one of the 10 selected photographers, Jonathan Goldberg, who is focusing on transport. It’s great to see how his work is developing; an intense time, only about 3 months to work on this. Looking forward to seeing the final edit!
Had a very interesting day on 4 April at the Family Ties Network – Public and Personal Archives: Creative Negotiations at University of Sussex, lots of interesting discussions & projects. Fantastic, curious & engaged audience.
My presentation was called Standing By: The Ethics of Domestic Ethnography, and focused on my elderly parents’ daily habit of doing the quick crossword as a framework for exploring their relationship. It’s a personal, sound-led piece, and although I had played a few sound excerpts back in 2009 at the Journal of Media Practice conference, I had not returned to the work until this year, to merge in still images with the soundtrack – and so I was showing the work as a sound/still image piece for the first time. It’s now almost complete, just a little tweaking to do. I am not going to put the piece on my website or on the internet, but see it as an installation, a gallery piece. More details to follow when a gallery takes it on. But check out the work of the other artists here: Lizzie Thynne, Margaretta Jolly, Ed Hughes, Nicky Bird, Suze Adams, Rosy Martin, Marjolaine Ryley, Sally Waterman, Eti Wade, Jacqueline Butler. http://familytiesnetwork.wordpress.com/events/
Photo below of the Q&A after I’d presented Standing By is by Louise Harman.
