For our September Photo-Forum we’re pleased to announce presentations from Lottie Davies and Jane Hilton.
Lottie Davies was born in Guildford, UK, in 1971. She had a conventional childhood in Surrey with her parents and two brothers, and was educated in Alton and Godalming. After a degree in philosophy at St Andrews University in Scotland, she moved back to England to learn the photographic trade as an assistant in London, where she has since been based. Davies has been working as a professional photographer since 2000.
Davies’ unique style has been employed in a variety of contexts, including newspapers, glossy magazines, books and advertising. She has won recognition in numerous awards, including the Association of Photographers’ Awards, the International Color Awards, and the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Awards. Her work garnered international acclaim with the image Quints, which won First Prize at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Awards 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
As a photojournalist, she focuses on lesser-known communities and on ethno-political issues, putting forward a sharply critical view of contemporary Western complacency, with a desire to illuminate the lives of those often overlooked.
Her travel and editorial work is wide-ranging, from highly-produced set-pieces to more journalistic imagery, and this breadth of experience in varying approaches informs the fine art work for which Davies is rapidly becoming known.
Her fine art work is concerned with stories and personal histories, the tales and myths we use to structure our lives: memories, life-stories, beliefs. She takes inspiration from classical and modern painting, cinema and theatre as well as the imaginary worlds of literature. She employs a deliberate reworking of our visual vocabulary, playing on our notions of nostalgia, visual conventions and subconscious ‘looking habits’, with the intention of evoking a sense of narrative and movement. Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, has described Davies’ work as “brilliantly imaginative”.
Jane Hilton, photographer and filmmaker lives in London. She started out as a classical musician, graduating in 1984 with a BA (Hons) in Music and Visual Art from Lancaster University. Her love of photography brought her to London, working as an assistant for numerous fashion and advertising photographers before going it alone in 1988. Early work included both fashion and editorial alongside her documentary projects which are the mainstay and passion of her work today.
“My work is about the extraordinary realities of ordinary people’s everyday lives, revealing their individual characteristics and ways of being that one so often overlooks”.
It was on her first trip to Arizona in 1988, that she discovered an obsession for America and American culture. The contradictions in American society and the American dream is a recurring theme. Her work in Las Vegas is an epitome of this, where the line between fantasy and reality is constantly blurred. The transient nature of Vegas mixed with the incessant gambling philosophy provides a unique breeding ground for characters who live out these contradictions. Her series “Forever Starts Now” on the McDonalds’ style wedding culture illustrates this.
From proclamations of everlasting happiness in Vegas, Jane hit the empty desert roads of Nevada ending up 350 miles away near Reno, where a roadside brothel called ‘Madam Kitty’s Cathouse’ caught her eye. This chance encounter became a two year project and resulted in a ten-part documentary series for the BBC, “The Brothel / Love For Sale”, as well as a series of exhibitions on desert landscapes, pimps and prostitutes.
Inspired by a commission in 2006 to photograph a 17 year old cowboy, Jeremiah Karsten, who travelled 4,000 miles on horseback from his native Alaska to Mexico, Jane set off on her own four year pilgrimage, criss-crossing the cowboy states of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, New Mexico and Wyoming to capture America’s 21st century cowboys which has culminated in her recently published book – Dead Eagle Trail.
Jane’s work is regularly published in The Sunday Times Magazine and The Telegraph Magazine.
Fire regulations limit us to 100 people in Jacobs’ Pro Lounge. We rarely hit this limit but if you can come a few minutes early there’s less chance of being bounced if the evening proves more popular than usual.
