1 Last updated  24 January 2023

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Garry Clarkson graduated from the University of Westminster with a degree in Film and Photographic Arts in 1994 (specialising in documentary film directing and editing) and an MA in Documentary Photography from University of Wales, Newport in 2005; after which he joined the international photo agency Eyevine in London.

Prior to his current position as Senior Lecturer in Photography, he established and taught on the Communication Design course at Huddersfield for 12 years, before establishing the BA in Photography. In addition, he has acted as a visiting lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds College of Art and University of Westminster, London.

Garry began working primarily as a photojournalist in 1985, after winning a charity competition promoted by The Child Poverty Action Group; but, following an interview in The British Journal of Photography in 2001, has since concentrated on work in opposition to the hard news agenda. In 2008 Garry was selected as one of 70 participants of 900 photographers from 42 countries to take part in the Descubrimientos (Discoveries) platform for the promotion and dissemination of works by ‘emerging international photographers’. This forum, at the Community of Madrid’s Council of Culture, was part of Photo España photography festival and Garry was one of the 5 eventual finalists interviewed in a special supplement in the Spanish newspaper El País.

Garry began his long association with ‘oral history’ and social documentary whilst a photographer and archive supervisor at The Bradford Heritage Recording Unit (1986-1988) and subsequently as picture editor for the ‘chartist’ Northern Star newspaper in Leeds (1989-1991). His coverage of the book burning in his home city of Bradford UK, following the publication of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses, was published firstly in the Independent newspaper before being recognized in ‘1989 Pictures of the Year’ in The Guardiannewspaper and as the front cover photograph for Simon Lee’s The Cost of Free Speech (Pentagram Design/faber & faber 1990). In addition to being featured in a TV documentary for Channel 4 Television.

Garry is interested in the definitions of Documentary in all its forms: film, video and photography as well as written and oral histories. His study of the codes and conventions of realist modes of photography since 1988 is supplemented by a current interest in disrupting this previous journalistic way of working through the incorporation of more self-conscious artistic strategies influenced by the Dada ‘anti-art’ movement formed during the First World War as a negative reaction to the horrors and folly of conflict. His current research revolves around disruptive strategies for the depiction of trauma through ‘post-memory’ reverberations of war and conflict.

• Documentary, Photojournalism and the News Agenda
• Social History and Photography
• Ethnography
• Cultural Industries
• Image Licensing, Intellectual Property and Copyright.