Graham Smith (photographer)

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This article is about a photographer of the north of England in the 1970s and 80s. For a photographer of musicians, see Graham Smith (music photographer).

Graham Smith (b. 1947) is an photographer from Middlesbrough, England, who was particularly active in photographing Middlesborough and the northeast of England in the 1970s and 1980s.

Smith studied at the Middlesbrough College of Art and later the Royal College of Art (London).^[1] In the 1970s he was among the photographers central to the Side Gallery; and created a series of photographs that showed working-class people in the north of England that were in a documentary style but were in fact montages.^[2] Work from the 1980s would show people within townscapes, in the words of David Alan Mellor, "atmospheric, steeped in popular (and personal) memory — dark, romantic places with all the melancholy attributed to Eugène Atget's familiar locations".^[3] Another Country, a joint exhibition with Chris Killip held in London in 1985, was generally well reviewed but to some appeared passé in the light of the new "postmodern" work of Martin Parr and others.^[4]

Smith curtailed his career as a photographer in 1990; since then he has been a professional woodworker and has also written; the latter work has appeared in Granta.

Smith's photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).^[5]

[edit] Exhibitions

Documents of the North East. With Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, James Cleet, and Robert Carling. Side Gallery (Newcastle), 1977.^[6]
North Tyneside. With Isabella Jedrzejczyk, Markéta Luskačová, and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Side Gallery (Newcastle), 1981.^[6]
Consett Steel. Side Gallery (Newcastle), 1982.^[6]
South Bank. Side Gallery (Newcastle), 1984.^[6]
Another Country. With Chris Killip. Serpentine Gallery (London), 1985.^[4]
Quayside. With Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Touring exhibition from the Side Gallery (Newcastle), 1994.^[6]
No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1968–1987. Aberystwyth Arts Centre; Tullie House, Carlisle; Ujazdów Castle, Warsaw; Smith is one of a number of photographers shown.^[7]
Three from Britain. With Chris Killip and Martin Parr. Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, March–May 2008.^[8]

[edit] Writing

"Albert Smith." Granta 95: Loved Ones. Granta, 2006. ISBN 0903141884.

[edit] Notes

^ Notice of Three from Britain exhibition, Artnet.com.
^ Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, 33.
^ Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, 110.
^ ^a ^b Badger, Chris Killip, 11.
^ MoMA and V&A: notice of Three from Britain exhibition, Artnet.com.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Side Gallery Exhibitions 1977–1994", Amber Online. Accessed 11 April 2008.
^ Press release for the exhibition, British Council. Accessed 11 April 2008.
^ Rose Gallery press release for Three from Britain exhibition, Artnet.com.

[edit] References

Badger, Gerry. Chris Killip. London: Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-4028-9.
Mellor, David Alan. No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967–87: From the British Council and the Arts Council Collections. London: Hayward Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-85332-265-5.
Rose Gallery press release for Three from Britain exhibition, Artnet.com. Accessed 11 April 2008. Also appears at this page at Artslant.com. Accessed 11 April 2008.
Schad, Ed. "A Look at Three from Britain". Artslant.com, 2008. Review of the exhibition. Accessed 11 April 2008.
"Three Photographers from Britain: Nothing but Class". Photoinduced.com, 2008. Accessed 11 April 2008. A description of the exhibition Three Photographers from Britain; includes a reported interview with Smith.