Items where Subject is "Photography"

In 2015 Ellison was invited by fashion brand owner ‘Cherchbi’ Adam Atkinson to publish a book about Herdwick wool a raw material of the rug sacks Cherchbi produced.

The subsequent book, Herdwick Common was published under the brand publishing imprint, as a 98-page photo book with accompanying essay from acclaimed author, James Rebanks,
(The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District). When reading into Herdwick sheep, something I discovered was ‘heft’ - A place where the sheep were rooted to by birth and returned to instinctively. This is something author James Rebanks has written about in his publication ‘A Shepherds Life’ a retelling of life spent as a farmer near Penrith. His book content and title inspired by W.H. Hudson ‘A Shepherds Life’ tells a passionate account of the up and downs of growing up as a farmer.

Research Imperatives

Ellison explores the cultural and symbolic significance of sheep on the region of Cumbria. The oldest reference to sheep kept in the Lake District is in documents dating from the 13th Century when the Cistercian monks of Furness Abbey near Barrow and Fountains Abbey near York farmed large areas. The documents simply make reference to the use of the short, coarse hair of the sheep for their habits. There is no mention of Herdwick although short, coarse hair may be a clue to one of the characteristics of an early hill breed.

Ellison began by researching the name ‘Herdwick', thought to derive from Herdvyck, Norse for ‘sheep pasture’. This has led some to believe that the breed was, maybe, brought into the country in the 8th and 9th centuries by Norse invaders from what are modern Denmark, western Sweden and Norway. More likely though, they were named Herdwick simply because most Lake District farms had land for sheep and were referred to as ‘herdwicks’. So the sheep adopted their name from the farms. The breed seems to have changed somewhat over the past two centuries to what we accept today as the Herdwick. Drawings and prints from the 19th century seem to indicate a taller and less stocky version of what we have in the 21st
century.

The book brings together an essay by James Rebanks, a story told from within alongside of series of photographic portraits that tie together this ancient rural livelihood.

Despite the censorship of dissident material during the decade between the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, a number of photographers across Japan produced a versatile body of Surrealist work. A pioneering study of their practice, this book draws on primary sources and extensive archival research in order to map out art historical and critical contexts relevant to the apprehension of this rich photographic output, most of which is previously unseen outside of its country of origin. Richly illustrated, the volume is an essential resource in the fields of Surrealism and Japanese history of art, for researchers and students of historical avant-gardes and photography, as well as for readers interested in visual culture.

This book challenges the status quo of the materiality of exhibited photographs, by considering examples from the early to mid-twentieth century, when photography’s place in the museum was not only continually questioned but also continually redefined.

By taking this historical approach, Laurie Taylor demonstrates the ways in which materiality (as opposed to image) was used to privilege the exhibited photograph as either an artwork or as non-art information. Consequently, the exhibited photograph is revealed, like its vernacular cousins, to be a social object whose material form, far from being supplemental, is instead integral and essential to the generation of meaning.

The research captured in this publication builds on Wenham-Clarke’s photographic project The Westway: a portrait of the community, exhibited at St Martin’s in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, London in 2013, which included 15 Traveller images. Further ethnographic research into this community resulted in 2019 of a new publication Urban Gypsies.

The research explores the immense socio-political and economic pressures exerted upon a community of Irish Travellers sheltering beneath the A40, a major highway leading into central London. Today very few Travellers in the UK are able to maintain their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Most are restricted to official sites. Over many months Wenham-Clarke gained the Travellers confidence and was granted unprecedented access, immersing himself in the community and becoming a trusted member, invited to attend weddings and christenings. The images provide a unique insight into a community that rarely gives access to outsiders.

Not intended as a survey, the research draws on narrative history, oral history and qualitative research methodologies and explores the experiences of the Travellers over a 40-year period.

Few academic practitioners have been able to conduct such detailed research: the outcomes, negotiated entirely with the community, reveal uncensored views of the Traveller community, a marginalised subjugated group struggling to retain its cultural identity as it is gradually assimilated into the wider population. The project set out to challenge stereotypical views perpetuated by the popular media and highlights what is now perceived to be one of the last forms of ‘acceptable’ racism in Britain today.

The images were disseminated internationally through news websites such as CNN and News.com.au, Marie Claire Magazine and BBC Radio London, reaching a global audience, actively challenging and informing public perceptions, engendering debate and promoting inclusivity.

In the context of a rapidly changing world, Rachel Worth explores the ways in which the clothing of the rural working classes was represented visually in paintings and photographs and by the literary sources of documentary, autobiography and fiction, as well as by the particular pattern of survival and collection by museums of garments of rural provenance. The book analyses the ways in which clothing and how it is represented throws light on wider social and cultural aspects of society, as well as how 'traditional' styles of dress, like men's smock-frocks or women's sun-bonnets, came to be replaced by 'fashion'. This study, with black & white and colour illustrations, both adds a broader dimension to the history of dress by considering it within the social and cultural context of its time and discusses how clothing enriches our understanding of the social history of the Victorian period.

In recent years, the mainstream press in the UK and France have devoted significant attention to illustrated imagery in communicating contemporary events. In particular, the illustrated image via reportage has become a prominent tool for articulating the identities of individuals at the margin of society, for example victims of war, refugees and displaced people. This article explores this alternative method of reporting by focusing on the considerable coverage that the Jungle camp at Calais has received through reportage across the British and French press and beyond. Utilising Fuyuki Kurasawa’s essay ‘Humanitarianism and the Representation of Alterity: the Aporias and Prospects of Cosmopolitan Visuality’ (2010), the article looks at the reporting of the refugees’ situation through an analysis of illustrations presented in articles and blogs published by The Guardian, Le Monde, Libération and Arte. It examines the potential for reportage illustrations to provide ‘thicker’ representations, more complex discourses and new or alternative approaches to the construction of identities, in particular identities that constitute ‘the other’ within the contemporary European scopic regime. The article finds that the construction of the subjects’ identity follows established tropes which are related to the methods and conditions of creation, and that there is a need to query existing approaches in order to question dominant discourses of identity. Moreover, we suggest that within the case of such image making, it is the identity of the artist/publisher/reader that is ultimately asserted, within the context of a humanitarian discourse.

On the First of May 2000, central London was beset by some of the most violent civil unrest seen on the streets of the capital for decades. Tens of thousands of activists had gathered as part of global anti-capitalist protests, drawing vast crowds under a miscellany of banners, causes and affiliations. Anti-road movement ‘Reclaim the Streets’ was one such splinter group. Over the previous five years it had staged numerous street interventions, unannounced occupations of city centre road junctions and pop-up protest parties such as the moment in mid-July 1996 when 6,000 protesters blocked a section of the elevated M41, a four-lane motorway running through Shepherd’s Bush in West London. Hidden underneath colourful dancers on stilts and wearing expansive wire-supported dresses, environmental activists busily drilled holes in the motorway tarmac and planted small trees and saplings; the noise of the pneumatic drills was drowned out by the blare of music sound-systems rolled onto the highway.

"Fortunes of War evolved through an enquiry led (pre-internet) approach that focused on a Lamarkian preoccupation with the potential impact of an environment on collective and individual behaviour. The intention was to create anticipatory photographic images. A ‘retention vanish’ approach to composition placed the emphasis on framing the subject of the image from the perspective of the distraction and not the scene. Through this an attempt was made to counter pre-occupied states of mind, circumventing a censorship of expectation relating to the form of both the work itself and significantly that of its maker."

Erratically embellished with sprayed stencils, logo-rich stickers, elaborate murals, and unintelligible doodles, our urban environment overflows with irreverent and unlicensed imagery.

Classic New York freehand and wildstyle graffiti has evolved, adapted, and atomised into a democratic and divergent forms of visual expression that is captured under the nebulous term ‘street art’. ‘It is characterised’, states curator Riika Kuittinen, ‘less by a visual style than by an approach to transmission: it is unfiltered visual communication, fluidly moving across the derelict buildings,bus shelters and hoardings of cities across the world.” Armed with attitude of irreverence, equality and freedom, it is in fact a new genre that mutates and morphs at the rate of a viral pandemic. Lacking a common aesthetic, street art, a term loathed by classic wall ‘writers’ speaks loudly to a passing population, even if it remains entirely obscure to most.

The exhibition asked a number of questions about the evolution of graffiti into ‘street art’, and more recently into ‘urban art’, by way of the alleyway and backwall. Where do such images truly belong now: in the alleys of our urban centres or on the white walls of the gallery? Can they belong in both? What happens when the urban calligraphy of tags and stencils is subsumed by the auction
house, and why do we feel a sense of loss when the raw energy of street art, of urban writing, is absorbed by the mainstream media, and effectively tamed. Why is that some of the best illicit art of the street is promptly ripped off the wall, taken out of its context, seized into private hands. In effect moved from the public wall to
behind a pay wall.

Alongside South India’s rapid urbanisation, the early decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed the arrival of new digital technologies and social media platforms in India, opening new possibilities for performance on a mediatised urban and global stage. In a wave of popular performance practices emerging around 2011–2, Bengaluru (as with other cities across India) became the site to a host of flash mobs staged in urban spaces and filmed for online publics. This chapter examines the flash mob performance trend of that era in relation to national discourses of ‘New India’as an example of forms of cultural practice characterised by an ‘aesthetics of arrival’ in globalising India.

Photography’s role in the historical framing of how we see can hardly be overestimated: heralded as the most extraordinary invention in vision, it was meant to deliver the promise of technology’s ability to enrich and improve human sight. Simultaneously, the medium’s capacity to offer photographic evidence placed it at the crossroads of the techniques of representation and regulation. Even as the machine is ever so rapidly substituting the eye in the forging of endless stream of visual data that we are now subjected to, digital vision still relies on the photographic image.
Against such a background, this article departs from a proposition that if we were to envision different ways of seeing we can start from a reformulated understanding of photography. In order to do so, the article critically examines recent photographic works by Taisuke Koyama and Nihal Yesil and argues that abstract photography in particular enables the recognition of material entanglements between the medium and what it aspires to represent. ‘Following’ such materials as cellophane, aluminium, PVC as well as light, the article also mobilises Karen Barad’s project of agential realism in its view of abstract photography as a tool for looking with, a vehicle that enables the rethinking of the medium and, by implication, the ethical parameters of vision that hinges on it.

The commemorative period between 2014 and 2018 was marked globally by numerous exhibitions of original artworks that had been commissioned and created during and immediately after World War 1. Most national and state museums and galleries also curated comprehensive survey shows of original work from the period; some curators took a thematic approach, some designed new permanent exhibits, and a significant number created innovative opportunities for contemporary artists to reflect on the centenary through the creation of bespoke artefacts, installations and exhibitions.

This paper considers the relationship between site, memory and fine art practices, as viewed from the perspectives of a practitioner informed by the discourses of commemoration and the aftermath of conflict. Through an exploration of art works derived from encounters with displaced spaces, peripheries and edgelands, Gough situates his practice – and that of several selected artists – as a conversation between “place”, “space” and the geopolitical. Artists have long employed the notions of ambiguity, transition and the hybrid in their work.

Framed within the discourses of liminality and aftershock, practitioners have explored various strategies to address rites of in-betweenness to evoke a sensation of transition and displacement. To explore these ideas, Gough posits a number of his artworks as ‘provocations’, and draws attention to other contemporary artists and practitioners similarly drawn to the aftermath of constructed places and re-constructed histories. The paper draws upon two suites of Gough’s work each addressing aspects of the aftermath, and each to a degree addressing issues of transgression. The first is a series of site-specific photographs take on the decrepit and abandoned British army bases in former West Germany where Gough’s family was garrisoned during the Cold War.

They speak of an abjectness and blankness tempered by the depth of familial association. The second suite of practice use frottage, rubbings and photographic collage, to assemble a cycle of triptych forms drawn from prolonged site visits to the sites of twentieth century battle in Turkey, France, Belgium and Macedonia: locations richly associated with transgressive military intervention and now comprised of preserved terrain, military cemeteries and rhetorical topography that has long informed Gough’s practice.

This article is a contribution to the section on colour photography that I guest-edited for PhotoResearcher 31 (also including articles by Dr Laure Blanc-Benon and Dr Caroline Fuchs).

The text discusses the intrinsic elusiveness of colour photography vis-à-vis the complex historical baggage of its synthetic nature and in respect of Rainbow’s Gravity (Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger, 2014) and A 240 Seconds Analysis of Failure and Hopefulness (with Coke, Vinegar and other Tear Gas Remedies) (Basim Magdy, 2012),

This article discusses the work of the Japanese photographer Takuma Nakahira at the turn of the 1970s. Nakahira’s practice departed from the candid street photography (seen, for example, at the 1966 exhibition Contemporary Photographers: Towards a Social Landscape in the US), and sought means to not only document but also induce social and political change. Having a strong theoretical grounding in the specific discourses developing in Japan at that time around the notions such as the image (eizō), landscape (fūkei) and materiality (busshitsu), this practice is still significant to much of the present-day concerns with the potential of visual arts to envisage and produce new forms of urban inhabitation.

At 1 p.m. on 6 February 1971, eight “actors,” a reporter, and a cameraman entered a space at an undisclosed location with the intention of spending 24 hours together. They did not belong to a single artistic group and some of them had never met before. Tōmatsu Shōmei’s photographic record of this event appeared in the spring 1971 issue of the magazine Kikan shashin eizō accompanied by sections from a transcript of the tape recording. The images and the text – jointly titled NO.541 – offer fragmented glimpses into the situations and conversations unfolding in the room and also function with and against each other, as in a dialogue.

The jointly written text continues this dialogue in the writing up of major themes contextualizing the performing and recording of this work: the space, the magazine page, and the body. We imagine ourselves in NO.541 and enact this intermingling of space-times by reproducing not only some of Tōmatsu’s photographs but also parts of the transcript in translation. Joining the conversation, we adopt some of the main strategies of the image-text, such as fragmentation, improvisation, and refusal of any singularity. Woman C and Man G take on the role of mediums, channeling, for instance, a possible future re-enactment instead of producing a conclusive account of the event.

There are many dynamic communities of practice within the arts but not all of them can claim to have their own research culture. Consequently, many researchers become adept at co-opting theoretical frameworks, research methods, and language from other disciplines. But what happens when we use concepts and language developed elsewhere to address our own particular disciplinary concerns? Language matters, and as the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure noted, language is not a nomenclature—it is not simply a question of linking a set of words to a pre-existing set of things; different languages
divide up the continuum of the world differently.
It follows that the ways that we engage with other disciplines potentially has a bearing on how we see, think and talk about our home discipline. This conference explores the
challenges and benefits of research that features significant interaction between two or more disciplines. It will explore [even contest] ‘trans-’, ‘cross-’ and ‘multi-’ disciplinary approaches to research.

From the 1970s, Latin American women began making documentary films with clear political intents. These films shed light on the precarious conditions that characterized women’s entry to the workforce and other labour struggles, on reproductive rights and women’s role in production and reproduction, and on the inevitable questioning of identity that results from migration and displacement. However, the historiography of Latin American cinema continues to ignore the legacy of these filmmakers. This thesis acknowledges and re-signifies women’s documentaries and reclaims their contributions to film history. Moreover, it provides a new lens through which to revisit the history of Latin American documentary while also adding to the scholarship on Latin American women’s filmmaking through both theoretical analysis and creative practice. In the written component, I propose three approximations to the study of Latin American women’s documentary cinema between 1975 and 1994. To do so, I have curated a selection of nine documentaries produced during these decades that illustrate some of the thematic interests, modes of authorship and production, and formal strategies and aesthetic devices employed by women filmmakers. Ultimately, I contend that this corpus of work was produced during a formative moment for women’s and feminist cinema. The analyses of these films have informed the making of the creative component. The short documentary Processing Images from Caracas traces the archive of activist, filmmaker, and photographer Franca Donda and the film collectives that she was part of, Cine Urgente and Grupo Feminista Miércoles. It also shows how Latin American women’s documentaries and other relevant materials that could make up an archive of women’s and feminist cinema are at the brink of disappearance and foregrounds the urgent need to create such an archive.

In 2018 Ellison was invited by curators Lou Stoppard and Adam Murray to exhibit a series of his Cumbrian portraits and landscapes in North: Fashioning Identity at Open Eye, Liverpool, Somerset House, London and Civic Centre, Barnsley. This celebrated exhibition generated worldwide press coverage and formulated new research opportunities into regional identities in Photography and Fashion. Following this celebrated exhibition, Ellison was invited by Centre Centre to publish Tek Hod, Embroidered Wrestlers of the North.

Research Imperatives

Ellison explores the cultural significance of embroidered costumes of regional sport Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling. The costume of white cotton vest, velvet underpants and white cotton long john’s features motifs that represent or identify the wrestler. Commonly, embodying the idyllic picturesque image of the English Lake District, this costume represents the celebration of rural life depicted by vernacular embroidered symbols. Usually associated with nature, the costume embroidery is sewn by the family who wrestle, often abbreviating the initials of the wrestler and decorated with flora and fauna featuring the native landscape of Cumbria and much celebrated English Lake District.

Ellison researched critic John Ruskin’s connection to the arts and crafts in the Lake District and how his patronage of craft influenced the style of embroidery seen on wrestling costumes. Ellison’s subsequent documentary photographs (2008-2018) follow the wrestling contests in the landscape and trace the performance of tradition. Furthermore, his cross disciplined analysis of embroidery and photography traces the ‘skilled’ labour of the arts and crafts in the Lake District against the ‘unskilled’ vernacular embroidery seen on wrestling costumes from archival photographs.

The book Tek Hod, Embroidered Wrestlers of the North brings together a documentary photographic practice alongside a rigorous research project that re-frames knowledge of the arts and crafts and the picturesque through archived photographs used to chart the evolution of craft - crediting amateur makers of embroidery.

Franca Donda (Italie, 1933-2017) s’est initiée à la photographie avec le photographe américain Paul Strand et s’est impliquée dans les cercles culturels de la gauche italienne. Si elle et son mari, le photographe Paolo Gasparini ont vécu quatre ans dans la Cuba révolutionnaire, c’est à Caracas que Donda a passé la majeure partie de sa vie. Avec d’autres femmes engagées, Donda y a contribué à la diffusion des idées féministes en créant de nouveaux récits filmiques et photographiques. Ses photos représentent aussi bien la lutte des féministes latino-américaines que la vie quotidienne des femmes de la classe ouvrière et des communautés indigènes, dans divers pays d’Amérique latine. Elles constituent des archives absolument uniques et pratiquement inédites qui peuvent être versées à l’histoire des femmes au Venezuela
et à l’histoire du féminisme en Amérique latine.

Bodyworks
This was a solo exhibition shown at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, which selects and showcases the work of contemporary and emerging new artists. The images were shown as part of The Format International Photography Festival, Derby (2013); a print was also selected for the Royal Photographic Society’s annual print exhibition (2013)

Research Imperatives
Initial research explored technological advances in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs over a seventy year period from the 1940s to the present day and included devices made for the victims of war, accident and disease.

Despite the huge advances that have been made, particularly in the last ten years, the research found that there was still demand for prosthetic limbs made to designs dating back to the 1940s; these were primarily for people who had been issued with such limbs many years ago but did not wish to update. Craftsmen manufacture these traditional limbs from wood, metal and leather, exactly as they were made to supply the seriously injured survivors of the Second World War.
The research focused on one such prosthetic limb manufacturer that continues to produce both traditionally made and modern limbs. Wenham-Clarke explored every corner of the factory which allowed him to locate significant objects that conveyed a narrative of both the patients and the workers. Many of the objects found and recorded had been stored out of sight for decades.

The images exhibited in Bodyworks high-lighted the craftsmanship and the many tools used to manufacture the limbs. They record images of a dwindling work force, the last of their kind as no new workers are being trained, operating within a factory that was originally built for a staff team fifteen times bigger than the present day. They also reflect public interest in morbidity and its fascination with the artificial.

Hard Times
This was a solo exhibition of 20 photographs shown at St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ Gallery, London which showcases the work of contemporary artists. The exhibition, which was also shown in Bournemouth, Birmingham, Inverness and Wick, reached a wide audience and received numerous awards including the Association of Professional Photographers’ Gold Award.

Research Imperatives
Hard Times shed light on the hidden lives of Britain’s homeless through a collection of photographs of Big Issue vendors, about whom little is known.
The underpinning research was essentially sociological. Wenham-Clarke researched at the Big Issue headquarters at Waterloo identifying individuals and patterns of experience, identifying a set of issues and responding to them in ways that were intended to move the ground of public debate. It was also practice-led research involving testing out composition, medium and mode of delivery. A further aspect of the research touched on methodologies of oral history using selected quotations from interviewees to accompany the images. Building on previous work by Shelter and other organisations (Ken Loach, Cathy Come Home, 1966 and The Crisis Commission, Somerset House, March-April 2012) it also sought to develop the use of art as a tool against homelessness.
Wenham-Clarke’s research took him on a journey to locations mainly hidden from public view. He researched where people slept rough or in temporary accommodation within and without cities. The research involved not only identifying appropriate locations and individuals but also importantly working to win the confidence of the subjects he intended to photograph and gaining their consent.
The research highlighted the fact that unemployment and rough sleeping involves people of all ages, both male and female; it challenged common perceptions around the causes and circumstances of homelessness, and provided a fascinating insight into individual’s personal history, their relationships, the challenges they face and their hopes for the future.

Our Human Condition was a research project that addressed the personal stories of siblings in which one or more of them has a genetic condition. The resulting suite of 29 photographs was exhibited at The OXO Gallery, London during January 2020, and by invitation at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in February 2020.

Over a two year period of sustained engagement, Wenham-Clarke worked with seven charities to recruit families with well-known conditions such as Downs Syndrome to more rare conditions such as Albinism and ATRX. The programme of research explored how the siblings’ development influenced each other’s lives; how they saw society; and how society related to them. It sought their views on new genetic therapies and screenings that are now available or might be introduced in the future. The project included one family whose son was taking part in one of the first human genetic trials for muscular dystrophy.

Powerful and moving insights into the world of these individuals were revealed,
demonstrating a robust pride in their sense of worth and contribution to wider society. These finding were shared at The World Congress of The International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2019.

The work was selected in the highly prestigious peer-reviewed exhibitions, such as AOP50, the 50th Anniversary of The Association of Photographers, The British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain, and The International Photography Awards. The London exhibition had 4000 visitors and hundreds of thousands of views by commuters whilst on the large scale digital screens at Waterloo Bridge and along The Thames Embankment. Genetic Society and leaders in the field of genetics have acknowledged the work's contribution to public education and awareness.

‘The Rock: Above & Below’ is an extended photographic research project exploring the fractured relationship between the community of The Isle of Portland (Dorset) and the quarrying of Portland Stone, once so intrinsically linked, physically and culturally to the island.

Quarrying played a huge part in the island’s history, employing hundreds of workers and shaping the community’s identity. First used by the Romans, Portland Stone has been used to build iconic structures such as The Palace of Westminster, the City of London, and the United Nations Building in New York.

Taking an auto-ethnographic approach to the project, Wenham-Clarke connected with key figures who have lived on the island for generations, including the heads of the mining operations, a lighthouse owner, tug boat captain, funeral director, prison nurse and Portlanders to explore the modern-day link between community and stone. Through photographic portraits and audio interviews the work draws on narrative history, oral history and qualitative research methodologies.

Research outcomes provided a powerful insight into the consequences of industrialisation which has destroyed generational and cultural links and forced the industry to automate and excavate huge tunnels into the island beneath the local community. Wenham-Clarke’s images record these subterranean cathedral-like spaces mined by robotic equipment, controlled by a handful of highly skilled operators from outside the community. The resulting suite of images juxtapose the robotic machinery below and the local community above, set in the context of Portland’s high levels of unemployment and social issues.

In addition to numerous publications, photo essays and group exhibitions, a final selection of 25 photographs and audio tracks were exhibited as part of the B-Side Arts Festival and a selection were shown across Dorset on bus shelter posters and bill boards as part of an extensive public engagement strategy funded by regional arts boards and local enterprise.

Sacrifice the Bird Song
This was a solo exhibition of 19 photographs shown at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, which selects and showcases the work of contemporary artists and emerging new artists.

Research Questions
Sacrifice the Bird Song explores the plight of British wildlife as it struggles to survive in an environment dominated by the automobile. The work highlights the changing balance of our ecosystem in response to large numbers of road-kill. The work builds upon a previous project by Wenham-Clarke entitled When lives Collide (2006) which focused on those unfortunate people affected by road traffic accidents.

Research Imperatives
Through the use of photography Sacrifice the Bird Song questions our attitude to our own environment and focuses on the direct impact of road-kill on our ecosystem.

The underpinning research was both qualitative and quantitative. Wenham-Clarke researched by making direct contact with wildlife rescue centres that deal on a daily basis with animals injured on the roads. He also made links with conservationists and even taxidermists who collect road kill. The research revealed an apparent serious imbalance in the natural ecosystem. There are very high death rates for some species, but others that rely on carrion are experiencing significant growth in number. The research also highlighted that for some animals such as deer, their top predator is now the car.

The images themselves are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to contrast against the public’s normal preconceived view of road-kill. This is a very deliberate attempt to draw in the viewer and allow them time to absorb the significance of the image and so the issue. Referencing ‘Memento Mori’, ‘Veritas’ and also modern advertising imagery the work explores our own relationship with our environment. With this work Wenham-Clarke asks the fundamental question, “In this modern era in which we give a price to everything, what value do we place upon our own ecosystem?”

Westway
This was a solo exhibition of 55 photographs shown at St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ Gallery, London. A print from the exhibition was shortlisted for the World Photography Organisation’s 2013 Awards; selected for the Royal Photographic Society’s annual print exhibition; and short listed for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize for 2013, exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

Research Questions
The research explored contemporary society’s reliance and infatuation with the automobile. It examined how individuals and small communities are affected by intense urbanisation; whether living in such an environment had short or long term influences on life opportunities, including education and/or employment; and how a community copes with being dissected by a major structure that has little purpose for them. The research questions broadened during the course of the research to examine the influence of urban redevelopment along the route of the A40 encouraged through changing land values as land that was once worth nothing, became worth millions.

Research Imperatives
The research was primarily sociological, documenting the lives of those living beneath and in the shadow of the A40 flyover in west London which bulldozed through the heart of North Kensington in the 1960s taking with it 600 homes and forcing 1,000 people to leave the area. It also employed methodologies of oral history, using selected quotations from interviewees to accompany the images, developed during a previous project Hard Times (2011).
The research involved working to win the confidence of the subjects Wenham-Clarke intended to photograph and gaining their consent; this included a Gypsy community where outsiders were not normally welcomed.
This project provided unprecedented insights into the homes, businesses, sports facilities and educational centres of those living under the Westway; it also highlighted the multi-cultural aspects of the area and revealed some very positive aspects of living in a modern, ethnically diverse Britain.

The 'When Lives Collide 2023' exhibition depicts the real-life horror of road collisions as described by those involved and aims to raise awareness of the risks we all face on a daily basis as road users.

Taken by renowned photographer Paul Wenham-Clarke, a Professor of Photography at Arts University Bournemouth, the images are being exhibited to mark the 30th anniversary of RoadPeace, the road victims' charity. The RoadPeace provides information and support services to people bereaved or seriously injured in road crashes and engages in evidence-based policy and campaigning work to fight for justice for victims and reduce road danger.

Every single day on the UK's roads, on average five people are killed, 84 are seriously injured yet despite this, the public is largely unaware that so many people are affected by crashes. Many people don’t believe that they or their loved ones will be affected by a collision. But the exhibition shows that crashes affect everybody whatever their age or gender and wherever they live.

The images serve as a window into the soul of people who have experienced everyone’s worst nightmare and address the senseless loss of life that our society so easily seems to accept. "Some of the portraits capture raw emotions as they surge and flow through the participants, from grief-stricken crying, to fighting back the tears to smile, as they remember their lost one. In British culture, we shy away from crying in front of others, or even watching others cry, but these images allow a prolonged examination of a range of visceral emotions and will evoke a strong response in anyone who sees them.

Nick Simmons, CEO of RoadPeace, said: “When Lives Collide 2023 takes an artistic approach to explore the impact of road harm from the point of view of those directly impacted by it. Paul’s work so cleverly and creatively documents the lives of crash victims and acts as a call to work together to end road death and injury. If this exhibition makes just a few people think about their actions next time they get behind the wheel and turn off their phone before they drive, or decline that alcoholic drink then it will be a great achievement.”

Investigating the performing body as both a still and moving image In the Gap Between is a live performance work consisting of 5 performers and lasting approximately 15-20 minutes.
Informed by synchronised dance structures such as Corps de Ballet and The Chorus Line; the work utilises key characteristics of these structures (moving in sync, single file arrangement, repetition, pace & pauses) as a means to explore the body as an image. The movement vocabulary for the live work is developed in rehearsals where performers explore every day micro-actions such as shifting weight, turning, stretching & leaning. By slowing movement down, the work invites the performers to fully explore these often-overlooked gestures whilst challenging audience spectatorship.