Lisa Barnard

Lisa Barnard’s (b.1963, UK) photographic practice discusses real events, embracing complex and innovative visual strategies that utilise both traditional documentary techniques with more contemporary and conceptually rigorous forms of representation.

Barnard connects her interest in aesthetics, current photographic debates around materiality and the existing political climate.

“Barnard describes herself as a photographic artist, but her work seems unapologetically political. She pays homage to, and undercuts, the tropes of documentary realism”. Sean O Hagan, Guardian Review of ‘Chateau Despair’.

Lisa is an Associate Professor and Programme leader on the MA in Documentary Photography at The University of South Wales. As well as teaching on the BA in Documentary Photography she also has a number of PhD students, including Clementine Schneiderman, Ana Catarina Pinho and Edgar Martins. She has three publications, Chateau Despair, supported by the Arts Council and Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines in the Garden, supported by the Albert Renger Patzsche Book Award, both with GOST and The Canary and the Hammer published by MACK in September 2019 and was supported by the Getty Images Prestige Grant.

The ‘Rules’ of Photography

As we prepare our plans for Summer School, we're revisiting some of the Photo No-Nos of this great book. Do you have a favourite? Let us know!...

Jiangbeizui Central Business District, Chongqing, China, 2017 (14). From Forest series (2010-2017). ©Yan Wang Preston.

Contested Landscapes

From Where I Stand (From my point of view), the third Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, explores how photography draws connections between art, journalism, and activism....