The Rural Gaze
Alannah Cooper, Emily Graham, Guy Martin, Leah Gordon, Marco Kesseler, Matthew Broadhead, Murray Ballard, Navi Kaur, Oliver Udy and Colin Robins, Polly Braden, and Sam Laughlin
Grain Projects
English
Texts by Camilla Brown and Mark Durden.
Hardcover
170 pages
250 x 310 mm
2021
ISBN 9781527293632
In January 2020 GRAIN Projects commissioned 11 new bodies of work by photographers who collaborated with rural communities, making work in response to rural locations in the English Midlands. The diversity of approaches are significant and provide a new voice in the rural aesthetic.
This book contains eleven new bodies of work that draw our attention to some of these issues and themes. Writers Camilla Brown and Mark Durden have contributed essays to this publication that explore the themes of the work by commissioned artists and photographers Alannah Cooper, Emily Graham, Guy Martin, Leah Gordon, Marco Kesseler, Matthew Broadhead, Murray Ballard, Navi Kaur, Oliver Udy and Colin Robins, Polly Braden and Sam Laughlin.
In the work the artists and photographers explore issues of rural life, environments, economics, politics, land use, community, young people and cultural identity against a backdrop of crises of post Brexit agriculture, the climate emergency and Covid 19 pandemic. In England the rural accounts for 80% of the land area and around 20% of the population (source DEFRA). These are communities that are the minority, are often not heard as loudly as the urban, who face many societal issues including deprivation, isolation, health and wellbeing concerns and are often misaligned and misunderstood.
The projects range from the poetic, documentary, conceptual and archival and demonstrate a range of different approaches to photography about the rural that is not dominated by the picturesque, pastoral or romantic but by the complexities, connections and diversity of the rural landscape. The work responds to people and places in a state of significant change and decline and our essential and integral relationship with the rural.
The projects show a disappearing way of life, disconnected communities and habitat loss, brought on by a lack of understanding of the rural, our extraction from the natural world and consumerism. At this time rural communities have lost faith in our politics, government and systems, not for the first time in our history, Brexit has so far failed the countryside and rural habitats and communities are vanishing.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/the-rural-gaze?_pos=1&_sid=b94c470fd&_ss=r)
About the Authors
Alannah Cooper is a photographer, writer and craftswoman, with an MA in Fashion Communication from Central Saint Martins and was the first recipient of the New Fashion Image Prize in 2018. Featured in The Gentlewoman, Moon Magazine and 5Eleven Magazine, Alannah looks to making as a form of communication and tradition as active rather than of the past.
https://www.alannaheileen.com/
(source: https://www.alannaheileen.com/about)
Emily Graham (born 1983 in UK; lives and works in London) is an artist working primarily with colour photography.
https://emilygraham.co/
(source: https://emilygraham.co/info/)
Guy Martin graduated with a B.A(HONS) in DocumentaryPhotography from the University of Wales, Newport. He has been a member of Panos Pictures since 2011. From January 2011 he began to document the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa. From 2012 he was been based inIstanbul Turkey, where he produced ‘The Parallel State’ his first book about the rise of Turkish soft power and the complex new identities in the Turkish Republic. The book was published in 2018 by GOST books and subsequently was listed as on of Time Magazine’s best photo books of the year.
https://www.guy-martin.co.uk/
(source: https://www.guy-martin.co.uk/6320076-about)
Leah Gordon (born Ellesmere Port, UK) is an artist, curator, and writer. Her work explores the intersectional histories of the Caribbean plantation system, the Enclosure Acts, and the creation of the British working-class. Gordon’s work amplifies ‘histories from below’ and recognises the role of carnival, folk traditions, grassroots religion in both performing and sustaining radical histories.
https://leahgordon.co.uk/
(source: https://leahgordon.co.uk/CV)
Marco Kesseler is a carbon native photographer based in the UK, with a keen focus on portraits, food and stories that explore our connection to the environment and shape the land around us.
https://marcokesseler.com/
(source: https://marcokesseler.com/Info)
Matthew Broadhead is a British artist and teacher who works across photography and printmaking. Based in Bristol, UK.
(source: https://matthewbroadhead.com/)
Murray Ballard is a UK-based photographer and filmmaker whose work explores a broad range of subjects, including the environment, social issues, science, and technology. His practice often connects these areas, offering a thoughtful look at contemporary concerns.
https://murrayballard.com/
(source: https://murrayballard.com/info/)
Navi Kaur is an artist and arts educator based in Birmingham, UK.
https://www.theherbert.org/default.aspx
(source: https://www.theherbert.org/artist-spotlight-navi-kaur.aspx)
Colin Robins and Oliver Udy are British documentary photographers based in Cornwall. Both are academics teaching Photography, as well as practitioners working individually within Photography and Publishing.
https://oliverudy.co.uk/
https://anthologyofrurallife.co.uk/Index
(source: https://anthologyofrurallife.co.uk/about-1)
Polly Braden is a documentary photographer whose work features an ongoing conversation between the people she photographs and the environment in which they find themselves. Highlighting the small, often unconscious gestures of her subjects, Polly particularly enjoys long-term, in depth collaborations that in turn lends her photographs a unique, quiet intimacy.
https://www.pollybraden.com/
(source: https://www.pollybraden.com/about-1)
Born 1990, Sam Laughlin is a British visual artist. His recent practice is primarily concerned with intricate natural processes which quietly unfold in patterns and cycles. Mainly utilising large format black and white photography, his work is characterised by a sustained and informed engagement with nature, light and time. Laughlin has exhibited widely including at Towner Gallery, John Hansard Gallery, Jerwood Space, Impressions Gallery, Belfast Exposed and Serchia Gallery. In 2017 he was awarded the Jerwood/Photoworks award, which funded the production of his series ‘A Certain Movement’. His series ‘Spinning Away’ was awarded juror’s choice at the 2023 Hariban Awards and has been nominated for the 11th cycle of the Prix Pictet. In 2024 he was the inaugural Artist in Residence with Borders Forest Trust, supported by Connecting Threads. He works mainly on personal projects and commissions and is currently based in Somerset, UK, where he also lectures on photography.
https://www.samlaughlin.co.uk/
(source: https://www.samlaughlin.co.uk/info)
Camilla Brown trained as an art historian completing her BA studying with Professor Griselda Pollock at Leeds University she then studied for her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is a curator, writer and lecturer on contemporary art, specialising in photography.
https://www.lensculture.com/
(source: https://www.lensculture.com/camilla-brown#:~:text=Camilla%20Brown%20trained%20as%20an,contemporary%20art%2C%20specialising%20in%20photography.)
Mark Durden is Professor of Photography at University of Wales, Newport.
https://www.routledge.com/
(source: https://www.routledge.com/Fifty-Key-Writers-on-Photography/Durden/p/book/9780415549455)
About the Publisher
GRAIN is one of the leading exponents of photography nationally and they practice inclusive photography. They deliver activities and projects in collaboration with partners regionally, nationally and internationally, to support and grow photography opportunities for artists, communities, audiences and participants.Tthey are dedicated to supporting artists to achieve their ideas and ambitions and to creating new and innovative opportunities in photography for everyone.
grainphotographyhub.co.uk
(source: https://grainphotographyhub.co.uk/about-grain/)
