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John Blakemore

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John Blakemore (born 1936), is an English photographer who has worked in documentary, landscape, still life and hand made books.

He has been the recipient of Arts Council awards, a British Council Travelling Exhibition and in 1992 won the Fox Talbot Award for Photography. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.[1]

Life and work

Blakemore was born 15 July 1936 in Coventry and was educated at the John Gulson School, before working as a grower in Warwickshire and Shropshire. Self-taught in photography, he discovered the medium during National Service with the Royal Air Force in Tripoli 1954-56.[2]

Professional photographer

Wartime childhood experiences and Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man exhibition inspired him initially on his return home to photograph the people of Coventry and its post-war reconstruction as a freelance 1956-58 with the Black Star photo agency. In 1958 he married and became director of Taylor Brothers Studio in Coventry, and then in a variety of studios including Richard Sadler Studio (1962-3) and Courtaulds of Coventry (1963-68) where he was initially employed as a black and white printer before being promoted to a photographer's position, then over 1968-9 worked at Hilton Studios, London. He remarried in 1970 and worked thenceforth as a freelance again.[2]

Fine art photography

Blakemore had his first solo show, a documentary series Area in Transition at the Coventry College of Art, but after receiving a 1974 grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain he concentrated on his landscapes in the north-west of Scotland, North Wales and Derbyshire; he received further bursaries from the Arts Council in 1976 and 1979.[2] For his landscapes, Blakemore worked in black-and-white and applied the Zone System and much darkroom work to his prints. He has also worked in still life, including a series on tulips.

Reception

Among the earliest reviews of Blakemore's work was Merete Bates' in The Guardian, critiquing his show in Impressions Gallery held alongside photojournalism by Bert Hardy;

John Blakemore concentrates on landscape. His photographs are small, personal, intense, and search out poetic images that have particularly human relevance. Wounds of Trees for example, focus on bark goudged and scarred like flesh, on branches gnarled and knotted like rheumatism, on trees bare and dying among surrounding foliage. In Metamorphoses, water freezes and thaws. Even in the more traditional seascape of sunrise over Mawdach Estuary, Blakemore conveys a peculiar, still, sharp melancholy. His failure, if any, does not arise from lack of visison, but from insufficiently pursued images. There is an overall darkness in the prints that almost obscures the content. And even Wounds of Trees could be more decisively, dramatically shot.[3]

Educator

In the early 1970s Blakemore joined his friend Richard Saddler as a lecturer at Derby College of Art. He later became Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Derby, where he taught from 1970 to 2001, being influential on the younger generation. In 1978 he made Exploring Photography III: The Landscape, broadcast on BBC-2 England.[2]

Exhibitions

Solo

  • 1964: Area in Transition, Coventry College of Art, Great Britain[2]
  • 1965: Girls School, City Architects Gallery, Coventry, Great Britain[2]
  • 1966: City Architects Gallery, Coventry, Great Britain[2]
  • 1967: Two Photographers, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Great Britain[2]
  • 1972: Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham, Great Britain[2]
  • 1972: Morgan Gallery, Coventry, Great Britain[2]
  • 1973: Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham, Great Britain[2]
  • 1975: A Vision of Landscape, Impressions Gallery, York, Great Britain[2]
  • 1976: Touring show, Arnolfini Gallery, BristolGreat Britainand The Photographers' Gallery, London[2]
  • 1978: Michael House School, llkeston, Great Britain[2]
  • 1979: Photographic Gallery, Cardiff, Great Britain[2]
  • 1980: Lila, The Photographers' Gallery, London, Great Britain[2]
  • 1981: Contrasts Gallery, London, Great Britain[2]
  • 1981: Camera Obscura Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden[2]
  • 1981 Impressions Gallery, York, Great Britain[2]

Group

  • 1972: Festival, Nottingham, Great Britain[2]
  • 1973: Serpentine Photography '73, Serpentine Gallery, London, Great Britain[2]
  • 1974: New Photography, Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham[2]
  • 1974: 3 Photographers, Galleria II Diaframma, Milano, Italy[2]

Publications

  • 1976 John Blakemore c/o Arts Council of Great Britain, London (GB)
  • 1976 Camera (CH).
  • 1976 British Journal of Photography
  • 1976 Nye Foto (Netherlands)
  • 1976 Portfolio, Creative Camera Yearbook
  • 1977 Creative Camera International Yearbook
  • 1977 John Blakemore. British Image 3. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977. Edited by Barry Lane, introduction by Gerry Badger. ISBN 0-7287-0107-3.
  • 1977 British Journal of Photography Annual
  • 1978 Catalogue Perspectives on Landscape, Arts Council of Great Britain, London (GB). Introduction by Bill Gaskins
  • 1979 Ten.8
  • 1979 Spirit of Place: Photographs in Wales, 1971–78. Welsh Arts Council, 1979. ISBN 0-905171-40-3.
  • 1980 Amateur Photographer
  • 1981 Lexikon der Fotografen, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Text by Jörg Krichbaum
  • 1981 Portfolio Thistles London
  • 1981 Print Letter
  • 1981 Amateur Photographer
  • 1981 World Photography, Hamlyn , London. Text by Bryn Campbell
  • 1982 Contemporary Photographers, Macmillan, USA
  • 1982 Dumont Foto 4, DuMont Buchverlag, Koln
  • 1983 Macmillan Biographical Encyclopedia of Photographic Artists & Innovators, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (USA). Text by Turner Browne & Elaine Paltrow
  • 1991 Inscape: Photographs by John Blakemore. London: Zelda Cheatle Press, 1991. ISBN 0-9518371-0-9.
  • 1994 The Stilled Gaze. London: Zelda Cheatle Press, 1994. ISBN 0-9518371-6-8.
  • 2005 John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 2005. ISBN 0-7153-1720-2 (hardcover), ISBN 0-7153-1721-0 (paperback).
  • 2011 Photographs 1955-2010 Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2011. ISBN 978-1-907893-12-4. With an essay by Jane Fletcher.

Collections

  • Arts Council of Great Britain
  • Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Department of the Environment in London
  • Royal Photographic Society, Bath
  • National Library of· Wales, Cardiff
  • Fotografiska Museet, Moderna Museet in Stockholm
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA)
  • West Midlands Arts Association in Birmingham
  • East Midlands Art Association

Since 2010 a large part of Blakemore's archive has been held at the Library of Birmingham, in particular:[4]

  • Early Documentary Portraits (1986-1988).
  • Landscape Photographs (1970-1981).
  • Still Life Photographs (1980-2004).
  • Tulipmania, Tulipa and other Tulip Studies (1980-2004).
  • The Luminous Garden (1998 – 2002), earlier expressive colour works (1965-68) and Polaroids (1980s).
  • Hand-made books and portfolios.
  • Portfolios: Z15 (30 x 30), Zelda Cheatle Gallery.
  • John Blakemore – Early Landscapes, Hoopers Gallery, 2004.
  • Work prints, writings, notebooks, preparatory books, letters, catalogues and ephemera.

Awards

Exhibitions

Sources

References

  1. ^ a b "Honorary Fellowships (HonFRPS)". Royal Photographic Society. Archived from the original on 27 January 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Michel., Auer, (2000). Photographers encyclopaedia international from the beginnings to the present = ncyclopédie internationale des photographes : des débuts à nos jours. Ides et calendes. ISBN 2-8258-0126-7. OCLC 496550025.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Merete Bates, "Bert Hardy", The Guardian, 13 October 1975, p.8
  4. ^ "The John Blakemore Archive", Library of Birmingham. Accessed 3 January 2015.
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