Josephine Pryde

Recognised for subverting the archetypes of fashion photography via the disruptive integration of archive materials, Josephine Pryde (b. 1967, Alnwick) is one of the U.K’s foremost contemporary women photographers.

Showcasing her inventive approach, Josephine frequently re-works and displays images in unusual ways, subverting standardised gallery conventions. Inserting aluminium tubes into her fashion photography, she pierces the illusory cohesion of images and emphasises their status as objects.

In other series, the organic subjects of her work – including the human body – suggest interrelation between the ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’, blurring the boundary between technology and the natural world.

Notions of ‘surface’ recur; in Hands, (Fur mich), a series presented as part of the Sky, Rocks & Digits exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery in tandem with work by Angela Bulloch, extreme close-ups of hands and fingers are pictured touching tactile yet unyielding objects such as touchscreens and lamps.

The cleverly titled ‘Thumb, Pad’ images highlight the contact between body and object, suggesting the integrity of such technologies to modern sensory experience. In keeping with her idiosyncratic style, Josephine has more recently displayed this work behind a layer of coloured Perspex, generating additional dimension by simulating a digital filter via tangible means.

Since earning an MA in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins, London, Josephine has been teaching contemporary photography at the University of the Arts in Berlin alongside her professional art practice.

She has had numerous solo shows at galleries such as Arnolfini (Bristol), Simon Lee Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery (London) and Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York), and has participated in numerous international group shows.

In 2016, she was nominated for the Turner Prize for lapses in Thinking By the person i Am, a series wherein she placed objects on kitchen worktops and exposed them to sunlight.

The resulting images, reminiscent of photograms, reveal the surprisingly atemporal position of technology within photographic aesthetics; hundreds of years after these techniques were first developed, pioneering women in photography, such as Josephine, are finding ways to configure them anew.