Photographing History: Conflict, Time, Photography artists in conversation with Simon Baker

About

As well as depicting action and incident, photography can sustain deep reflection on moments in the distant past and their repercussions in the present.

Hrair Sarkissian, Chloe Dewe Mathews and Diana Matar join in conversation with Conflict, Time, Photography curators Simon Baker and Shoair Mavlian to discuss their work in the context of this exhibition, their relationship to conflict, modes of representation and historical narratives.

Biographies

Chloe Dewe Mathews

Mathews is an award-winning photographic artist based in London. After studying fine art at Camberwell College of Arts and the University of Oxford, she worked in the feature film industry before dedicating herself to photography. Her work is internationally recognized, with solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern and the Irish Museum of Modern Art and editorial features in the Guardian, Sunday Times and Le Monde. Public and private collections have acquired her work, including the British Council Art Collection and The National Library of Wales. Chloe’s first monograph, Shot at Dawn, was published by Ivorypress in 2014. Her awards include the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award, the Julia Margaret Cameron New Talent Award and the Flash Forward Emerging Photographer’s Award. Chloe is currently the Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Diana Matar

Matar is an artist working with photography, testimony, and archive. Using image, sound, and text, her bodies of work investigate issues of immigration, urban development, displacement, memory, and political disappearance. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Matar has been the recipient of the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art, the International Fund for Documentary Photography Award, The Arts Council of England Individual Artist Grant, and has been nominated for Prix Pictet award. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections and is published and exhibited internationally. Her first monograph, Evidence, was released in November 2014 by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam. 

Hrair Sarkissian

Sarkissian was born in Damascus, Syria and now lives and works in London and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In much of his photography landscape and the urban environment become stages for the expression of historical realities, where human presence is implied but never overtly depicted. Employing traditional documentary techniques, his photographs are eloquent expressions of a hidden paradox that exists between the beauty and constancy of the surroundings and the social realities that they conceal. Sarkissian’s work has been included in numerous regional and international exhibitions including Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; FotoMuseum, Antwerp, Belgium (all 2013); SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey (2011); Tate Modern (2011); Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan (2011); the Kalfayan Galleries, Athens, Greece (2010); Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2009) and the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2009).