Mark Neville (born 1966)[3] is a British social documentary photographer.[4][5]

Mark Neville
Born1966
NationalityBritish
EducationUniversity of Reading; Goldsmiths' College (London); The Rijksakademie (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Known forSocial documentary photography, war art
Notable workPort Glasgow Book Project[2]
Patron(s)Imperial War Museum; Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation,[1]
Websitewww.markneville.com

Life and work

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Neville studied Fine Arts at Reading University, Berkshire (B.A.), Goldsmiths' College in London (M.A.) and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands, although he was asked to leave after a violent incident with a female student.[6] As an artist he is known for working at the interface of art and documentary utilizing photography and films to capture the unique face of working communities.

Neville is best known for his Port Glasgow Book Project,[2] after he spent a year as artist in residence in Port Glasgow in 2004 portraying the town's hardship of Scotland's post-industrial decline in a photographic book which was distributed as a gift to members of the community. He has worked on commissioned projects by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (Braddock/Sewickley, 2012)[7] and Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute (Fancy Pictures, 2008). His work Deeds Not Words,[8] which addresses the Corby community involved in the toxic waste disposal court case,[9] exhibited in 2013 at The Photographers' Gallery in London.[10][11][12] Neville created a small body of work based on two 1-month residencies with the British Army in the Afghan province of Helmand as the UK's official war artist in 2010/11.[13][14] Part of The Helmand Work showed at London's Imperial War Museum's Contemporary Art Gallery during its relaunch in Summer 2014.[15][16] Neville claimed to have suffered from and was eventually treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon his return from Helmand, and this experience also resulted in The Battle Against Stigma Book Project. A selection of emails and prints from the book was included in the touring group exhibition With Different Eyes – The Portrait in Contemporary Photography which opened at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur and Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2016, and in Neville’s solo show Battle Against Stigma at QUAD in Derby, England in 2018.

In 2012 The New York Times Magazine commissioned Neville to make the photo essay Here is London,[17] which examined wealth inequality in the capital, and which they subsequently nominated for The Pulitzer Prize. In 2016 Steidl published the first commercially available book on Neville's activist book practice. Fancy Pictures includes work from six of Neville's projects with an interview between David Campany and Neville and was shortlisted for the 2017 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards PhotoBook of the Year.[18]

Neville’s 2017 project Child’s Play continued his investigation into mental health issues by examining the importance of play in personal development. Neville’s project made a link between the closures of adventure playgrounds in Britain’s urban areas and a drastic rise in cases of depression and anxiety among young people and children.

Begun June 2016 on the day Britain voted to leave the European Union Neville's Parade book project was commissioned by GwinZegal Centre of Art, in the town of Guingamp, France. Disgusted by the outcome of the Brexit vote, Neville decided to examine what community meant in Brittany ('Little Britain’), as a mirror to his own native country.

For many years, Neville lived and worked in London. In October 2020, he moved to Kyiv in Ukraine.[19]

Awards

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Publications

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  • Port Glasgow. Self-published, 2004. Edition of 8000 copies.[n 1]
  • Deeds Not words. Self-published, 2011. Edition of 500 copies.[n 2]
  • London/Pittsburgh. London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2014. ISBN 978-0957508576.
  • Battle Against Stigma. Self-published, 2015. Two volumes; one volume has photographs by Neville and text by Neville and Jamie Hacker Hughes, the other volume contains written testimonies from various soldiers. OCLC 918969112.[n 3]
  • Child's Play. London: Foundling Museum, 2017. OCLC 1156951143. Edition of 500 copies.[n 4]
  • Fancy Pictures. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2016. ISBN 978-3-86930-908-8. Includes work from six of Neville's projects. With an interview between David Campany and Neville, "Fancy Pictures".[n 5]
  • Parade. Guingamp, France: GwinZegal, 2019. ISBN 979-10-94060-25-4.[24][25][26][n 6][n 7]
  • Stop Tanks with Books. Nazraeli, 2022. ISBN 978-1-59005-564-9. Photographs by Neville and short stories by Lyuba Yakimchuk. Edited by David Campany.[27][n 8][n 9]

Notes

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References

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  1. ^ Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2018. Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Port Glasgow". National Galleries.
  3. ^ "Mark Neville". www.nationalgalleries.org. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
  4. ^ "People power: Mark Neville's documentary photography – in pictures". The Guardian. 6 January 2017. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  5. ^ "Mark Neville's Immersive Photo Experiment". The New Yorker. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  6. ^ "About". Mark Neville.
  7. ^ "Picture of the week: Mark Neville 'Woodland Hills High School Prom'". The Guardian.
  8. ^ "My best photograph: 'Mark Neville: Corby Carnival Queens'". The Guardian.
  9. ^ "Exhibition sheds new light on Corby toxic waste scandal that left 16 children with birth defects". The Independent.
  10. ^ "Mark Neville 'Deeds Not Words'" (Press release). The Photographers Gallery London.
  11. ^ Campany, David. "David Campany on 'Deeds not Words'".
  12. ^ Shaw, Anny (16 July 2014). "Imperial War Museum reopens in London after £40m revamp". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
  13. ^ "Review: Mark Neville's Helmand Work at the IWM London". Apollo Magazine. 13 August 2014.
  14. ^ Mansfield, Susan (23 September 2011). "The art of war". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on 28 March 2015.
  15. ^ "Contemporary Art Gallery: Mark Neville" (PDF) (Press release). Imperial War Museum.
  16. ^ "Mark Neville: 19 Jul–25 Sep 2014 at Imperial War Museums, London". Wall Street International. 28 May 2014.
  17. ^ "Here Is London". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
  18. ^ a b "In Paris: 2017 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards". www.1854.photography. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
  19. ^ Zoe Whitfield (9 February 2022). "Fotos aus der Ukraine, wie sie die Nachrichten nicht zeigen" (in German). vice.com. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
  20. ^ https://www.iwm.org.uk/sites/default/files/press-release/IWM%20Contemporary%20Mark%20Neville_0.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  21. ^ "Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2018: short list announced!". Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. 23 October 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2018.
  22. ^ "Shortlist announced for Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020". British Journal of Photography. 5 November 2019. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  23. ^ O’Hagan, Sean (5 November 2019). "French dogs and death camp skies reach Deutsche Börse photography prize final". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  24. ^ "After the Brexit Vote, Mark Neville Looks at Life in "Little Britain"". The New Yorker. 27 July 2019.
  25. ^ "Guingamp dans l'objectif amusé d'un Britannique". Le Monde. 27 June 2019.
  26. ^ "À Guingamp, «l’Echappée» du pénitencier." Libération, 10 May 2019.
  27. ^ Neville, Mark (11 March 2022). "Ukraine: Stop Tanks with Books – in pictures". The Guardian.

Further reading

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