Contributors’ Biographies

Subhankar Banerjee’s photography and writing explore eco-cultural relationships between human and nonhuman biotic communities and varieties of anthropogenic environmental violence, including climate change, and have engaged with three geographies so far: the Arctic; desert of the southwestern United States; and the coastal temperate old-growth rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. His photographs have been exhibited widely, including in the Rights of Nature: Art in Ecology in the Americas exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary and All Our Relations of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. His most recent book is an anthology he edited, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (2013). He has received several awards, including a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation and a Greenleaf Artist Award from the United Nations Environment Programme. In 2016, Banerjee was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Further details can be found at: www.subhankarbanerjee.org.

Mandy Barker has exhibited internationally including The Photographers’ Gallery, Somerset House, The Mall and Cork Street Galleries, London, The Aperture Foundation, New York, and The Science and Technology Park in Hong Kong. Her work is currently touring the United States as part of the exhibition, Gyre: The Plastic Ocean that began at The Anchorage Museum in Alaska. Mandy Barker has been nominated twice for the prestigious Prix Pictet award and won other awards including the LensCulture Earth Award 2015, IPA 2014 and The Royal Photographic Society’s Environmental Bursary 2012. She was interviewed live for Connect the World—CNN News, United States, for her series PENALTY during the time of the FIFA World Cup 2014, and contributed to CNN International, Time Magazines Lightbox for Earth Day 2012. Her series SOUP has been published in over 20 countries including Time Magazine, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Smithsonian, GEO and The Explorers Journal. Further details can be found at: www.mandy-barker.com.

Sian Bonnell is a UK-based artist and curator. Educated at Chelsea School of Art and Northumbria University, her images have been exhibited and published widely, most recently at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London throughout 2015. In addition to her own practice, she has continued to mentor emerging photographers and artists as well as curating numerous exhibitions in London and abroad; since 2014 she has selected and curated tertiary-level UK student photography for a series of exhibitions at Pingyao International Festival of Photography in China each September. She is regularly invited to review portfolios at prestigious events and has judged major competitions including the Jerwood Photography Prize in 2006 and the Taylor Wessing Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 2009. Further details can be found at: www.sianbonnell.com.

Deborah Bright is a Brooklyn-based photographer, writer and educator. Prior to becoming Chair of Fine Art at Pratt Institute, she held a joint appointment as Professor of Photography and History of Art/Visual Culture at the Rhode Island School of Design where she served as Dean of Fine Arts from 2009 to 2011. Her photographic projects have been exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum; the Museet for Fotokunst, Copenhagen; Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Cambridge Darkroom; and Vancouver Art Gallery. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian; Addison Gallery of American Art; Fogg Art Museum; Boston Athenaeum; Rose Art Museum; Binghamton University Art Museum; California Museum of Photography; and the RISD Museum of Art. She has received numerous grants and awards for her photography and critical writing. Bright edited The Passionate Camera: photography and bodies of desire, a groundbreaking collection of images and writings on photography and queer politics. Further details can be found at: www.deborahbright.net.

Camilla Brown trained as an art historian and is a curator, writer and lecturer at Middlesex University and a Visiting Fellow in Photography at the University of Derby. She regularly writes for artists’ monographs and for publication on the history of photography. Her curatorial practice has also been featured in a number of books and her series of essays about contemporary women photographers are available at: www.photomonitor.co.uk/reviewed_by/camilla-brown-2/. Also, for further information see: www.camillaebrown.co.uk.

Edmund Clark is an artist whose work links history, politics and representation and traces ideas of shared humanity, otherness and unseen experience through landscape, architecture and the documents, possessions and environments of subjects of political tension. Recent works The Mountains of Majeed, Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out and Control Order House engage with state censorship to explore the hidden experiences and spaces of control and incarceration in the ‘Global War on Terror’. Clark’s work has been acquired for collections including the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the National Media Museum in Britain, and internationally the George Eastman House Museum, USA, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA, and The Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland. He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service in 2011 and shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2012. He is represented by Flowers Gallery (London and New York), Parrotta Contemporary Art (Stuttgart and Berlin) and East Wing (Dubai). Further details can be found at: www.edmundclark.com.

Hannah Collins is an artist and filmmaker who has lived and worked in Barcelona and California and is currently living in London. Her work has been shown internationally most recently at the Caixa Forum, Madrid; Camden Arts Centre, London; and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover. Her films include La Mina, A Current History, Parallel, and Solitude and Company. Her work is featured in many collections including V&A, Arts Council, British Council and Tate in London; the Maison Européene de la Photographie in Paris; the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MUDAM in Luxembourg, and the Walker Art Museum and Dallas Museum in the USA. Her books and writing include, most recently, Hannah Collins (Sprengel Museum, Hannover 2015); the Fragile Feast (Hatje Cantz 2011), and Finding, Transmitting, Receiving (Black Dog 2007). Further details can be found at: www.hannahcollins.net.

John Darwell has exhibited widely including the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA, Mexico, South America and the Canary Islands. His work is featured in a number of collections including the National Museum of Media/Sun Life Collection, Bradford, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. John has published 17 books to date, the most recent being: Sheffield: In Transition (Cafe Royal Books); Chernobyl volumes 1 and 2 (Velvet Cell, 2014); Things Seen Whilst Wandering Around Attercliffe (Cafe Royal Books, 2014); ‘Desert States’: Images from the South West United States (Velvet Cell, 2014); and Grangemouth and the Forth Estuary (Cafe Royal Books, 2014). Further details can be found at: http://johndarwell.com.

Susan Derges began her career as a painter working in London and Berlin in the 1970s and moved to Japan in 1980 where she developed the camera-less approach to photography for which she has become internationally renowned. Cycles of life, death and change, and their relationship to physical experience are explored through visual metaphors that borrow from science, nature, psychology and art. She is currently working on a series titled Tide Pools, which has been developed with assistance from the department of Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth, where she is also Visiting Professor of Photography. Her publications include Liquid Form (Michael Hue Williams, London); Woma Thinking River (Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco); Elemental (Steidl, Gottingen); Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography (V&A/Merrell, London).

Andrew Dewdney is a research professor, PhD supervisor and lecturer at London South Bank University. He is a co-director of the newly formed Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, which is a collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery, London, as part of their ongoing Digital Programme. He is an editorial advisory member for the Routledge journal Photographies and the Intellect journal Philosophy of Photography and a Board Member of Culture24. Between 2007 and 2010 he was the Principal Investigator and Director of an AHRC major national collaborative research project between Tate Britain, University of the Arts London and LSBU. In 2014, he was a Co-Investigator on Cultural Value and the Digital, a further collaboration with Tate and the Royal College of Art. He has worked professionally in the cultural industries and voluntary arts sector as well as academia and through his research promotes the need for greater collaborative approaches between theorists and practitioners working in the public realm. Further details can be found at: www.lsbu.ac.uk/about-us/people-finder/prof-andrew-dewdney.

Charlotte Fox is an English artist and photographer. She graduated from the University of Lincoln (UK) with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art where her key interest was the manipulation of space photographically within an architectural context. Fox undertook a Master’s in Photography at De Montfort University (Leicester) to pursue her ambitions further by introducing sequencing to include the notion of time within her work.

Judy Harrison is a photographer, artist, writer, curator and lecturer. She was the Founder and Director of the Mount Pleasant Photography Workshop from 1977 to 1992, and in 2014 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Asian and Sikh Community of Southampton for her contribution to photography. Her documentary and editorial photography have been published widely and she has exhibited nationally in the UK. Her work is held in numerous collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She is currently a member of Photofusion Picture Library, London, and was a member of the FORMAT Picture Agency, London from 1986 to 2003. She is Principal Lecturer of Photography and Course Leader for MA Photography at the University of Portsmouth.

Martin Hartley has over a decade of travel on journeys to the North and South Poles and is one of the only photographers in the world with the skills to cross the frozen Arctic Ocean on foot and with dogs. He was nominated by Time magazine as one of their Heroes of the Environment in 2009 for his work with the Catlin Arctic Survey in documenting sea ice cover and ocean acidification. His work has been published internationally by: National Geographic, The Times, The Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and the New York Times; Hotshoe, British Journal of Photography, Practical Photography and Digital Photography. He is Director of Photography for Sidetracked magazine. His first book was Face to Face: Polar Portraits, published by the Scott Polar Research Institute. He has exhibited at venues including the Royal Geographical Society in London, the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge and Iniziative Culturali in Trieste, Italy. Further details can be found at: www.martinhartley.com.

Tom Hunter is an artist and film-maker living and working in East London. He is Professor of Photography Research at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and of the University College, Falmouth, and has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of East London. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the National Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Modernamuseet, Stockholm, National Gallery, Poland and Prado, Madrid. His work is in collections which include MOMA in New York; the V&A and National Gallery, London; the Modernamuseet, Stockholm; the Smithsonian, Washington; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His graduation work, The Ghetto, is on permanent display at the Museum of London. He has published six monographs about his work: Le Crowbar (2014); The Way Home (2012); Tom Hunter—Living in Hell and Other Stories (2005); Tom Hunter (2004 and 2003); Factory Built Homes (1998). Further details can be found at: www.tomhunter.org.

Jennifer Hurstfield is a London-based freelance writer and researcher. Her expertise is in public policy research and she has directed research for a wide range of organisations using a variety of research methods. For several years she was a co-editor of the London Independent Photography magazine. She is now involved in projects in the London region of the Royal Photographic Society.

Grace Lau is a photographer, lecturer and writer. She was born in London of Chinese parentage. In the 1980s, she explored the subculture of fetish and S/M bondage clubs in London and published Adults in Wonderland (Serpent’s Tail, UK, 1997). In the course of writing Picturing the Chinese (Joint Pub, Hong Kong, 2005) addressing western perceptions of the Chinese during the nineteenth century she recreated a nineteenth-century Chinese portrait studio in Hastings, in which she invited residents and visitors to sit for their portrait. The result was an archive of 21st Century Types in an echo of early western photographs of the Chinese as portrayed in her book. These portraits were shown at Tate Britain in How We Are and have toured across the UK. She has exhibited widely and her work is in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Michael Wilson Centre and David and Sarah Kowitz.

Simon Norfolk is a landscape photographer whose exploration of the idea of the battlefield has led him to work in some of the world’s worst war zones and refugee crises as well as photographing supercomputers used to design military systems and test launches of nuclear missiles. He won a major commission from Le Prix Pictet in 2013; Le Prix Dialogue at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2005; The Infinity Prize from the International Center of Photography in 2004; the Foreign Press Club of America Award in 2003: and the European Publishing Award, 2002. He has produced four monographs of his work including Burke+Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan (2011); Bleed (2005) about the war in Bosnia; Afghanistan: Chronotopia (2002) (in five languages); and For Most of It I Have No Words (1998) about the landscapes of genocide. His work is in major collections including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Getty, Los Angeles; and the Tate, London. Further details can be found at: www.simonnorfolk.com.

Deborah Padfield is currently Research Associate at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (UCL) where she also received her PhD. She has collaborated extensively with clinicians and patients exploring the value of visual images to clinician–patient interactions and the communication of pain. Her collaboration with Dr Charles Pither at St Thomas’ Hospital, led to a touring exhibition, pilot study and book, Perceptions of Pain (2003). Her recent collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients from University College London Hospitals (UCLH) led to several exhibitions, symposia and the current UCL Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects funded project Pain: Speaking The Threshold. She lectures and exhibits nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of a number of awards including Sciart Research Award, UCL Arts in Health Award, the UCL Provosts Award for Public Engagement 2012, British Pain Society Artist of the Year 2012 and a UCL Public Engagement Beacon Bursary 2015.

Maria Paschalidou works with photography and video performance. Her work seeks to blur the boundaries between the ‘real’ and ‘imagined’, through visual metaphors, fabricated environments, ephemeral constructions and participatory installations. Her research interests include initiatives for collaborative projects as well as activities that challenge dichotomies such as artist and audience, image and language and theory-praxis. Maria has participated in exhibitions, festivals and art projects in Europe, the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, China and South East Asia.

Thu Thuy Pham is a photographer working between London and Berlin. Further details can be found at: www.thuthuypham.com.

Ingrid Pollard is a photographer, media artist and researcher currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Westminster, London. She lives and works in London. She has developed a social practice with representation of history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens-based media. She has exhibited extensively in Britain, including exhibitions at Tate Britain and the Hayward Gallery, London and internationally including Barbados; Martinique; Houston, Texas; Emden, Germany; and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Monographs include Hidden in a Public Place (IMP Press, London) and Postcards Home (Chris Boot, London). Her work is in collections which include the V&A and Arts Council Collections in London. Further details can be found at: www.ingridpollard.com.

Conohar Scott is a photographic artist and lecturer at the University of Lincoln. Prior to taking up this post Conohar was the Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Centre for Environmental and Marine Science at the University of Hull. He completed his PhD by practice at Loughborough University and founded the artist-led collaborative initiative Environmental Resistance as part of his research practice. Conohar’s interest is in exploring how art can contribute to informal science learning and public engagement as a form of activism with science and technology.

Nigel Shafran was born in England in 1964. His work has been included in exhibitions such as Observers, Photographers of the British Scene from the 1930s to Now, Galeria de Arte SESI Sao Paulo, Brazil; How We Are; Photographing Britain, Tate Britain; Island Stories: Fifty Years of Photography in Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum; Reality Check, Photographer’s Gallery/British Council; Theatres of the Real, FotoMuseum Provincie, Antwerp and also at the Contemporary Art Society and at Fig - 1, both in London. Previous publications include Ruthbook (1995), Dad’s Office (1999), Edited Photographs 1992–2004 (2004), Flower’s for ___ (2008), Ruth on the phone (2012), Teenage Precinct Shoppers (2013) and Visitor Figures. His work is held in several public collections, including Simmonds and Simmonds, British land, Museum for Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Arts Council Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum. His new book, Dark Rooms, was published by Mack Books in February 2016. Further details can be found at: www.nigelshafran.com.

Janina Struk is a documentary photographer, writer and lecturer. Her articles, essays and photographs have been published in a wide range of journals, magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian, British Journal of Photography and Feminist Review. She is the author of two books, Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretation of the Evidence (I.B. Tauris, 2004), and Private Pictures: Soldiers’ Inside View of War (I.B. Tauris, 2011). She has taken part in discussions on British and Irish national radio and featured in documentary films, including History Detectives for PBS television in the USA, Engineering Evil for the History Channel and most recently The Secret of the Auschwitz Albums for ZDF, German television. She is regularly invited to lecture and take part in national and international seminars and conferences, and continues to research and write on the subject of photographs as evidence and the representation of war. Further details can be found at: www.janinastruk.com.

Patricia Townsend is an artist, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a writer on the interface between the artist’s process and psychoanalysis. She is a PhD candidate at the Slade School of Fine Art where her project is to study the creative process of visual artists. As an artist she works with photography, video and installation and shows her work in gallery exhibitions and film screenings. Recent shows include the solo exhibition Under the Skin at the Blue Gallery, Brantwood, Coniston, 2013, supported by an Arts Council award. Recent publications include: catalogue essay for the group exhibition Not for Sale, Trapholt, Denmark, 2015; ‘Creativity and Destructiveness in Art and Psychoanalysis’ in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol.31:1, 2015; ‘A Life of its Own’ in Free Associations, Vol. 65, 2014; and ‘Making Space’ in Little Madnesses: Winnicott, Transitional Phenomena and Cultural Experience (I.B. Tauris, 2013). Her work can be viewed at: www.patriciatownsend.net.