Vanessa Winship, a British photographer working on long term projects focusing on portrait, landscape, reportage and documentary photography often uses a personal connection to photograph in Eastern Europe and the USA. We were lucky enough that James was able to arrange for Winship and her partner George Georgiou to come into university as a guest lecture, and speak to us one on one about our work. This was such a big deal for everyone within the photography department because Winship is such an influential female photographer and has made moves within the photography world that people would only dare to do.

I was personally really moved having her come in because I was so inspired by the way that she has changed the dynamic of photography and follows her heart within her projects. She spends so much time with other people and trying to understand them and their communities before she photographs them which I found so inspiring. The way that she just goes and does rather than sitting around and waiting for something to happen is incredibly inspiring and I can only dream to be half the photographer that she is. Within the lecture, she told us a bit about herself and then moved on to telling us about her career.

• 35 year relationship in and with photography with her partner George Georgiou
• Vanessa is From Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire

Projects:

She Dances on Jackson –

• I believe this is the most personal work that I have made
• Beautifully poetic portraits and landscapes
• “I believe that magic is art and art, whether it be sculpture or anything, is magic”
• It was made in 2011/12 and published in may 2013
• Won an award from Cartier-Bresson foundation award so she could create this piece
• 2011 she was the first woman to receive the award and is still in 2018 the only woman
• This work was made based on a personal level when Vanessa discovered her father was incredibly ill…
• In amongst all of the preparation work, seeing people and talking about literature, I met a young woman who suggested I read a book which I discovered to be the worst book.
• I made this body of work in search of the American Dream
• Murder of a young African American teenager and beginning of the black lives matter movement
• Many of the people in the US don’t have a car, yet most see it as a necessity.
• My plan had been to work and follow my instincts based on my life experiences – a long chain of collections and connections
• US is a vast landscape – all of different histories and cultures – I can only ever say that this is my experience of America
• My experience of the US is a place where people yearn to connect
• Matthew Shepard – brutally beaten and left for dead
• We moved from place to place to try to comprehend what this project was about
• “there’s something exquisitely beautiful about America – a famous personality we all think we know”
• I carried with me a spectrum of second hand experiences, sometimes facts and sometimes fictions
• I lost my father over the course of making this work. There’s no doubt that the project was coloured by this. Each encounter shows a sense of vulnerability.
• In the book itself, there’s is only a single piece of text which is an encounter

Vanessa Winship:

“The letters and emails that I sent home were thoughts about what was happening with my father as well as the difficulty of making work whilst I was out there.”

“I made the picture of the Humber Bridge on my return when my father was very sick. It was too early in the morning to knock on the door and enter so I sat in my car and waited for the sun to rise.”

“As a photographer, I’m a bit of a geek in that I like to visit places that other photographers have stood and worked. I guess to see what they have seen and learn something from where they have stood.”

Questions:

How do you go about selecting people for your portraits, is it random?

“Well in this context, obviously I am following certain things. It’s a question of instinct, in this particular context, there’s no hard and fast rule. In a certain way, if I see and find somebody who somehow feels to have or carry something that resonates then I will ask. Most of the people that I take portraits of are strangers. Most of the time in my experience, people haven’t said no. I recently did a commission where I was essentially asking strangers to photograph them.”

What draws you towards black and white photography?

“Historically, I guess when I started out taking pictures… I mean you don’t become a photographer over night - it’s something you have to work really hard at. I didn’t have money but I could do it myself, at home, I mean when shooting black and white film. Black and white represented serious photography when I was growing up. What I am also trying to say is that these are photographs and real representations of people in life.”

If you were to speak to 20 year old Vanessa about your career, what would you tell her?

“I guess I’d say, to follow your instincts. And do what you need to do in order to continue on this journey of photography. In order to fund yourself doing your work and what you love. I think it is important that you - to me it doesn’t really matter whether you’re earning money at the beginning because you certainly won’t be earning it later hahahahahahah. Now there is a huge pressure for young people to approach other photographer’s. IT’S IMPORTANT TO FIND YOUR COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE THAT YOU CAN TALK TO.”

What dictated your travel through America?

“George had an opening at an area of America so we just started out there. I tried to be organic in a way that I wanted to follow instincts of people and places. In a certain way, we also followed the weather, in the first trip West and then South. It was following links and instincts. We have a number of friends in the states so we caught up with them whenever we could. It was very much an organic - it was madness.”

Overall, I found Winship’s presence in the uni really inspiring. I really liked the fact that we had such an amazing female photographer showing the rest of us that it is possible to make it in photography. I feel, especially as a female going into the photographic industry, that it is good to hear when someone is actually successful within the industry.