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Mark Power

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Mark Power (born 1959) is a British photographer.[1] He is a member of Magnum Photos[2] and Professor of Photography in The Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the University of Brighton.[3] Power has been awarded the Terence Donovan Award and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society.

Life and work

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Power was born in Harpenden, England, in 1959.[4] He studied Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic[4] (1978–1981), and then travelled extensively, discovering a love for photography along the way. Upon his return, he worked as a freelance for several UK publications and charities.

Power happened to be in Berlin on 9 November 1989 and photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall.[5][6][7] He later published the photographs in the book Die Mauer ist Weg! (2014).

Between 1992 and 1996, he embarked on The Shipping Forecast — a project that involved travelling to and photographing all 31 areas covered by the Shipping Forecast broadcast on BBC Radio 4.[8] This project was published as a book[8] and was a touring exhibition across the UK and France. He used a Volkswagen campervan as his mode of transport for the project, echoing the late Tony Ray-Jones, whose work has similarities in style and meaning to Power's.

Between 1997 and 2000, Power was commissioned to document the Millennium Dome in London, a project that resulted in another touring exhibition and the accompanying book, Superstructure.[9] Around this time his technical methods changed and he began to use colour film and a large format camera. This was followed by The Treasury Project, published in 2002, which recorded the renovation of the UK government's treasury building on Whitehall, London.

In 2003, he undertook another personal project, using the London A–Z map as inspiration. The work, titled 26 Different Endings, is a collection of images examining the areas on the outer boundaries of the map. The project was exhibited at the Centre of Visual Art at the University of Brighton,[10] and was published as a book in 2007.

Between 1988 and 2002 Power was a member of Network Photographers.[11] In 2002 he became a nominee of Magnum Photos, an associate in 2005 and a full member in 2007.[12]

Between 1992 and 2004 he was Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Brighton, becoming Professor of Photography in 2004, until the present.[11]

From 2004, he spent five years working on The Sound of Two Songs, on Poland's first five years as a member of the European Union.[13][14]

Between 2006 and 2010 Power collaborated with poet Daniel Cockrill to document the rise in English nationalism. The pair undertook a series of road trips around England, culminating in the book Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment.[15]

In 2011 he undertook a commission from Multistory to make work that explored the social landscape of the Black Country through photography and film. He made urban landscapes; a series of photographs of elegant footwear; and a series of short films made in beauty salons, tattoo parlours and nightclubs.[16][17]

In 2014 Power began a self-publishing imprint, Globtik Books, with the publication of his book Die Mauer ist Weg!.[18]

Technique

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Power primarily uses a digital medium format view camera, after he worked with large format film for many years.[19] More recently he diversified into short film making.

Publications

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Publications by Power

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  • Westminster Children's Hospital. Photographers Gallery catalogue, 1988.
  • The Shipping Forecast. Zelda Cheatle Press/Network, 1996. ISBN 1-899823-02-6.
  • Superstructure. Harper Collins Illustrated, 2000. ISBN 978-0-002-20205-3.
  • The Treasury Project. Brighton: Photoworks, 2002. ISBN 978-1-903-79605-4. Edition of 1500 copies, of which only 500 were made available for public sale.
  • 26 Different Endings. Brighton: Photoworks, 2007. ISBN 978-1-903-79621-4. Edition of 1000 copies.
  • Signes. Gulbenkian Foundation exhibition catalogue, 2008. ISBN 978-9-728-46246-8.
  • The Sound of Two Songs. Brighton: Photoworks, 2010. ISBN 978-1-903-79639-9. Edition of 2000 copies.
  • MASS. Gost, 2013. ISBN 978-0-957-42721-1. Edition of 750 copies.
  • Swap Shop - Postcards from America IV: Florida. London: Magnet Publishing, 2013.
  • Die Mauer ist Weg!. Brighton and Hove: self-published / Globtik Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9930830-0-6. Edition of 1000 copies.
  • Icebreaker. Another Place, 2018. ISBN 978-1-9997424-3-0. Edition of 600 copies.
  • Maintenance. Kyoto, Japan: Seigensha, 2018. ISBN 978-4-86152-660-2.
  • Good Morning, America (Volume I). London: Gost, 2019. ISBN 978-1-910401-20-0.
  • Good Morning, America (Volume II). London: Gost, 2019. ISBN 978-1-910401-32-3.
  • Good Morning, America (Volume II). London: Gost, 2020. ISBN 978-1-910401-49-1.
  • Terre à l'Amende. London: Gost, 2021. ISBN 978-1-910401-65-1.

Collaborative publications

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  • Buren, document Nederland, drie buitenlandse fotografen kijken naar Nederland = Neighbours: The Netherlands as seen by three foreign photographers. Amsterdam: De Verbeelding, 2000. With Eva Leitolf [Wikidata] and Stephan Vanfleteren; text by Tracy Metz [Wikidata]. ISBN 90-74159-30-3.
  • Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment. Brighton and Hove: self-published / Globtik Books, 2016. Photographs by Power, poetry by Daniel Cockrill. ISBN 978-0-9930830-1-3. Edition of 1500 copies.

Publications with contributions by Power

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  • Positive Lives: Responses to HIV. London: Network Photographers; Cassell, 1993. ISBN 0-304-32846-4. Part of the Cassell AIDS Awareness Series. Edited by Stephen Mayes and Lyndall Stein. Power contributes photographs for a chapter, "Grief and Loss". With a foreword by Edmund White and an introduction by Stephen Mayes. Each chapter also includes a written essay.
  • Home. Tokyo: Magnum Photos Tokyo, 2018. ISBN 978-4-9909806-0-3.

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ "Photographer Mark Power documents the collapse of the American dream". Financial Times. 3 March 2018. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  2. ^ "Magnum Photos' HOME: Mark Power – British Journal of Photography". British Journal of Photography. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  3. ^ Biographical profile Archived 2010-06-27 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ a b Power, Mark (9 June 2010). "Photographer Mark Power's best shot". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  5. ^ "Berlin Wall: the fall – in pictures". The Guardian. 10 October 2014. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 July 2018 – via www.theguardian.com.
  6. ^ Macdonald, Fiona. "Witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall – by mistake". Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  7. ^ "The Wall Comes Down and Nothing and Everything Happens at Once in Mark Power's 'Die Mauer Ist Weg!'". American Suburb X. 2 March 2015. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  8. ^ a b Young, Kevin (27 September 2007). "Shipping Forecast's 'baffling' legacy". Retrieved 10 July 2018 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
  9. ^ British Arts Council Mark Power: The Millennium Dome Archived 2009-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ University of Brighton News archive - Between something and nothing - inaugural lecture by award winning photographer Mark Power Archived 2006-09-24 at the Wayback Machine November 7, 2005
  11. ^ a b "Mark Power - Curriculum Vitae". Retrieved 19 December 2011.
  12. ^ Magnum Photos Mark Power
  13. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (7 August 2010). "The Sound of Two Songs by Mark Power". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  14. ^ "'If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough': how Magnum photographers follow Robert Capa's famous advice". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  15. ^ "The poet and the photographer who discovered Brexit Britain in 2006". Huck. 11 August 2016. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  16. ^ "Black Country Stories". multistory.org.uk. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  17. ^ "Things That Go Unnoticed". Royal Photographic Society Journal, July/August 2012
  18. ^ "New photography book on the fall of the Berlin Wall ", University of Brighton. Accessed 16 December 2014.
  19. ^ "My Panoramas Explained". markpower.co.uk. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
  20. ^ "1999 Mark Power AES2-BK". World Press Photo. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  21. ^ "Terence Donovan Award - RPS". Royal Photographic Society. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  22. ^ "Honorary Fellowships - RPS". Royal Photographic Society. Archived from the original on 14 April 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
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