In 2019 GRAIN awarded eleven new commissions to photographers to make new work in rural communities across the Midlands.  Using a range of approaches the photographers and artists explored aspects of rural life, culture and community at a time of emergency.  Post Brexit agriculture, migration, climate emergency, land ownership and rights, identity and health and wellbeing were amongst the themes explored through documentary and conceptual photography.   

Alannah Cooper, Emily Graham, Guy Martin, Leah Gordon, Marco Kesseler, Matthew Broadhead, Murray Ballard, Navi Kaur, Oliver Udy and Colin Robins, Polly Braden and Sam Laughlin.

The projects culminated in a publication and a symposium which disseminate the poetic, documentary, conceptual and archival approaches to photography about the rural that is not dominated by the picturesque, pastoral or romantic but by important new voices that show the complexities, connections and diversity of the rural landscape.  

The symposium took place online, hosted by GRAIN and facilitated by academics Camilla Brown and Mark Durden

The Rural Gaze publication is available here.

The Rural Gaze Symposium, Recording – £5.00 , purchase via the Paypal button below:

Image Credit: Around the Stump (c) Murray Ballard