Please note that this event will be recorded, if you do not wish to be part of the recording, please feel free to turn your cameras off once the talk begins. The talk will be made available on the Criminology website and YouTube channel at a later date.
Synopsis
In this talk I will explore ideas of visibility, representation, trauma and self-image in developing strategies of visualisation in art practice about criminal justice in English prisons, with particular reference to my work in HMP Grendon and HMP Kingston, and the subsequent exhibitions, catalogues and monographs.
Established in 1962, HMP Grendon is the only prison in Europe to operate wholly as a therapeutic community. Inmates there must have accepted responsibility for their offence, exercising a degree of control over the day-to-day running of their lives, making a commitment to intensive group therapy, democratic decision-making, and holding accountability to each other.
The talk will reflect on how prisoners and criminality are ‘seen’ in contemporary society and media discourse and strategies for visualising experiences of incarceration that question these forms of representation.
Registration will close at 12 midday on Weds 17th Feb. The link will be sent to you later that afternoon.
About the Speaker
Edmund Clark’s work links issues of history, politics and representation through a range of references and forms including photography, video, documents, found images and other material.
A recurring theme is engaging with state censorship to represent unseen experiences, spaces and processes of control in contemporary conflict and other contexts.
Clark has published six books and been exhibited widely including in major solo museum exhibitions at the International Center of Photography Museum, New York, the Imperial War Museum, London, and Zephyr Raum für Fotografie, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim.
His work has been acquired for national and international collections including the ICP Museum and the George Eastman House Museum in America and the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the National Media Museum in Great Britain.
Awards include the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service, the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award and, together with Crofton Black, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award and the inaugural Rencontres d’Arles Photo-Text Book Award.
Edmund Clark teaches postgraduate documentary photography students at the London College of Communication, part of the University of the Arts London. For four years Clark was artist-in-residence in Europe's only wholly therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon.
