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Paul Reas

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Reas, 2014

Paul Reas(born 1955) is a Britishsocial documentary photographeranduniversity lecturer.He is best known for photographing consumerism in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.

Reas has produced the booksI Can Help(1988),Flogging a Dead Horse: Heritage Culture and Its Role in Post-industrial Britain(1993) andFables of Faubus(2018). He has had solo exhibitions atThe Photographers' GalleryandLondon College of Communication,London;Cornerhouse,Manchester; andImpressions Gallery,Bradford. His work is held in the collection of theBritish Council.

Life and work[edit]

Reas grew up in aworking classfamily on theButtershawcouncil estate inBradford.[1]He was born and lived with four siblings in a house on Brafferton Arbor (since demolished) and was mostly raised by his mother, who also worked atBaird Television Ltd.assembling televisions,[1]or as a cleaner.[2](He would later remember his father as "Only ever there on Sundays and even then a sleeping, silent figure in an armchair."[2]) He left Buttershaw Comprehensive aged fifteen and spent five years as an apprenticebricklayerwith the firm of Roy W Parkin inClayton.[1]

He left Bradford to study documentary photography at theUniversity of Wales, Newportfrom 1982 to 1984.[3]David Hurnwas course head and among his tutors wereDaniel Meadows,John Benton-HarrisandMartin Parr.After six years as an undergraduate and then a college photography technician, he became a freelance photographer.[1]

Reas with fellow photographer and lecturer David Barnes. Abereiddy Bay, Wales, 2019.

Impressed first by Parr's photography ofHebden Bridgeand the work of the Exit group (Chris Steele-Perkins,Paul Trevor and Nicholas Battye) inSurvival Programmes,[4]Reas began with humanistic,fly on the wall,documentary photography in black-and-white using a35 mmcamera. He photographed working people, taking inspiration from both August Sander and Lee Friedlander's portrayal of working people, that he considered gave them the grace and dignity he experienced working in industry.[n 1][5]He soon moved into more subjective photography and in colour. He was aware of the colour photography ofPaul Grahamand Martin Parr, Charlie Meecham and Bob Phillips, but it was seeing the work of North American colour photographersWilliam Eggleston,Joel Sternfeld,Stephen ShoreandJoel Meyerowitzthat convinced him to change to colour for his own work and put him into an influential group of British colour documentarists including Graham andAnna Fox.[4]He changed to a larger format camera, which allowed smaller details to be easily read and understood, not requiring the bold graphic statements he considered necessary with 35 mm;[6]and to using aflashgun.

As influences and inspirations, Reas has also citedDavid ByrneandTalking Heads,[3]andnorthern soul.[6]

In 1985 he and Ron McCormick were the first photographers commissioned byFfotogalleryin Wales as part of itsValleys Projectto each produce a body of work which "focussed on the changing topographic landscape and the partial introduction of new technology into a latter day industrial wasteland". Other photographers commissioned wereDavid Bailey,Mike Berry,John Davies,Peter Fraser,Francesca Odell,Roger Tileyand William Tsui.[7][n 2]

Reas's first book,I Can Help,shows supermarkets, superstores and the like, photographed from 1985 to 1988.Val Williamswrites that "The people who Reas photographed emerged from its pages... as lost souls, modern Ancient Mariners adrift in an ocean of endless choices."[4]The photographs (1989–1993) in his second book,Flogging a Dead Horse,"explored the rise of the heritage business, taking issue with what he judged to be the cynical re-writing of the past of British working people by the leisure industry"; they are "edgy, viciously satirical comments on our appetite for vicarious experience."[4]

Reas worked commercially as an editorial photographer forThe Sunday Times Magazine,The Observer[1]and theBBC.[8]For a period he worked as an advertising photographer for clients such as BT and Volkswagen.[1]

He taught at the Faculty of Arts,University of Brighton,from 1993 to 1998.[9][10]He is course leader ofdocumentary photographyat the University of Wales, Newport.

In 2011/2012 Reas completedFrom a Distance,a year-long commission on the regeneration of theElephant and Castlein South London, part ofThe Elephant Vanishesproject, directed by Patrick Sutherland, for London College of Communication. He photographed people candidly, showing fraught and tense emotions (with the aid of an assistant with aboom mountedflashgun); portraits; cans of incense intended to provide help under specific social pressures; and discarded furniture. The photographs were exhibited in 2012 and published byPhotography and the Archive Research Centre(PARC) inFieldstudy 16: From a Distance.[n 3][11]

Reas has said of his work that "I would say I photograph people but I think the pictures are more about systems people find themselves in, people shopping in supermarkets, but it’s about consumerism and how we are caught up in that. I never set anything up. Everything I photograph is as it happens".[1]

As well as consumerism, Reas has also been concerned with politics, Americanisation, the heritage industry, gender politics and how northern working-class people are historically represented. His work is usually biographical.

In 1993, Reas began a series,Portrait of an Invisible Man,that examined the mystery of his distant and mostly absent father "by photographing the microcosm which a child observes in the macrocosm of home".[2]The curators of an exhibition at the Barbican wrote of this series: "Paul Reas's meticulously constructed descriptions of domestic life may perhaps exorcise demons, the ghouls and goblins which inhabit a child's imagination; they are photography as remedy, as exhumation and a personal adventure on a grand scale."[2]

Williams writes that Reas's work of the early 1990s "assume a documentary stance, but they are essentially polemical."[4]Robert Clark writes inThe Guardian:

Reas has an eye for themes that reveal a prevailing air of social disillusionment and cultural vacuity. As traditional industry disappears, we see the emergence of assembly-line technologies. The architectural identity of towns dissolve to make way for out-of-town shopping malls. Heritage-industry theme parks indulge in a politically dubious nostalgia as the London property boom explodes. On the face of it it’s unrelentingly grim. Yet Reas populates such scenes with real characters, replete with poker-faced humour and shrugging defiance. "[12]

Publications[edit]

Publications by Reas[edit]

  • I Can Help.Manchester:Cornerhouse,1988.ISBN0-948797-06-1.With a foreword by Rod Jones and a text ( "Hey big spender" ) byStuart Cosgrove.
  • Flogging a Dead Horse: Heritage Culture and Its Role in Post-industrial Britain.Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1993.ISBN0-948797-52-5.With text byStuart Cosgroveand an afterword byVal Williams.
  • Fables of Faubus.London: Gost, 2018.ISBN978-1-910401-10-1.With essays by Stuart Cosgrove, David Chandler,Ken Grantand Val Williams.

Publications with contributions by Reas[edit]

Exhibitions[edit]

Solo exhibitions[edit]

Joint exhibitions[edit]

Awards[edit]

  • 1999: Silver Award, The OK! Magazine Award - Best Use of Photography, Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999, forWedding(Volkswagen advertisement for which Reas was the photographer). One of three adverts in a Volkswagen campaign.[36]Weddingand the campaign itself also won other awards in the same ceremony.[37][38][39][40][41]
  • 1999: Yellow Pencil,D&ADforWedding(Volkswagen advertisement).[37]
  • 2004: Bronze, Best Portrait Poster category, 2004Creative CircleAwards, for an advertisement for Tesco Metro for which he was photographer.[42]

Collections[edit]

Reas's work is held in the following public collection:

Notes[edit]

  1. ^As seen in Sander'sPeople of the 20th Centuryseries and Friedlander'sLee Friedlander at Work(2002). Reas in particular cites Sander's photograph of a hod carrier (a bricklayer) from 1928.
  2. ^A resource on the Valleys Project is availablehere(PDF) within Ffotogallery's website.
  3. ^Fieldstudy 16is availablehere(PDF) within the UAL Research Online website.

References[edit]

  1. ^abcdefgGreenhalf, Jim (28 November 2013)."Bradfordian returns with his own exhibition".Telegraph & Argus.Retrieved24 April2014.
  2. ^abcdeVal Williams,Carol Brown and Brigitte Lardinois, eds,Who's Looking at the Family?(London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1994), pp. 38–39.
  3. ^abAndreasson, Karin (12 March 2014)."Paul Reas's best shot: a dad buying army wallpaper for his son".The Guardian.Retrieved24 April2014.
  4. ^abcdeVal Williams,"Elegies revisited: Photographs by Paul Reas 1985–1993", in Paul Reas and Stuart Cosgrave,Flogging a Dead Horse: Heritage Culture and Its Role in Post-Industrial Britain(Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1993).
  5. ^Paul Reas "Day Dreaming About The Good Times?",Impressions Gallery. Accessed 27 April 2014.
  6. ^"The Valleys Archive".Ffotogallery.Retrieved24 April2014.
  7. ^Mitchison, Amanda (1 April 1995)."Liz'll Fix It".The Independent.Retrieved27 April2014.
  8. ^Lewis, Tim (7 September 2014)."Paddy Considine: 'I was always portrayed as angry, but I was just ill'".The Observer.Retrieved8 September2014.Considine left for Brighton University to study photography, under the social documentarian Paul Reas
  9. ^"Paul Reas".University of Brighton.Archived fromthe originalon 8 December 2013.Retrieved24 April2014.Reas taught at the Faculty of Arts from 1993-1998
  10. ^Fraser, Giles (19 October 2012)."Because it sees us from a distance, utilitarianism will always fail".The Guardian.Retrieved26 April2014.
  11. ^abSherwin, Skye; Clark, Robert (13 December 2013)."Paul Paul Reas, Edward Chell, Sislej Xhafa: this week's art shows in pictures".The Guardian.Retrieved24 April2014.
  12. ^"From Talbot to Fox. 150 Years of British Social Photography".James Hyman.Retrieved24 April2014.
  13. ^abcdePotted biography of Reas; inGerry Badgerand John Benton-Harris (eds),Through the looking glass: Photographic art in Britain 1945–1989(London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1989;ISBN0-946372-17-9), p.194.
  14. ^abcdefghijPotted biography of Reas; in Val Williams, Carol Brown and Brigitte Lardinois, eds,Who's Looking at the Family?(London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1994), p. 120.
  15. ^abcdefghijklm"Paul Reas",Photographie(in Japanese).Accessed 30 April 2014.
  16. ^Exhibition noticeArchived26 April 2014 at theWayback Machine,University of the Arts, London. Accessed 25 April 2014.
  17. ^"Day Dreaming about the Good Times?".Impressions Gallery.Retrieved24 April2014.
  18. ^"Paul Reas –" Day Dreaming about the Good Times? "".Ffotogallery.Retrieved24 April2014.
  19. ^Descriptionof 3rd Fotobienal, 1988. Centro de estudos fotográficos. Accessed 27 April 2014.
  20. ^abcdPotted biography of Reas, p.219 of Val Williams andSusan Bright,How We Are: Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present(London: Tate Publishing, 2007;ISBN978-1-85437-714-2).
  21. ^Descriptionof 4th Fotobienal, 1990. Centro de estudos fotográficos. Accessed 27 April 2014.
  22. ^"Pivot: sixteen artists using photography in Wales and Philadelphia".University of Sunderland.Retrieved28 April2014.
  23. ^"Documentary Dilemmas".British Council.Archived fromthe originalon 26 April 2014.Retrieved24 April2014.
  24. ^Holly Walsh, "The House in the MiddleArchived29 April 2014 at theWayback Machine",Frieze,March 2005. Accessed 27 April 2014.
  25. ^"From Brighton Exposition collective",Photographie,6 May 2006. Accessed 28 April 2014.
  26. ^Encontros da Imagem 2006 scheduleArchived17 June 2014 atarchive.today.(in Portuguese)Accessed 17 June 2014.
  27. ^Booklet(in Portuguese)about the festival, availableherewithin the website of Krystyna Ziach. Accessed 30 April 2014.
  28. ^"How We Are: Photographing Britain: Room 5".Tate.Retrieved24 April2014.
  29. ^Cadwalladr, Carole (25 October 2009)."Martin Parr: Parrworld".The Guardian.Retrieved23 March2014.
  30. ^"Nothing is in the place: Curatorial project by Jason Evans",Photomonth. Archived by the Wayback Machine, 14 August 2010; accessed 27 April 2014.
  31. ^"Cockroach Diary appears in Nothing is in the Place at Brighton Fringe",Anna Fox, 25 September 2010. Accessed 11 September 2020.
  32. ^Festival schedule(PDF), GNRation.(in Portuguese)Accessed 30 April 2014.
  33. ^"GNRation com muitas exposições durante o mês de MaioArchived17 June 2014 atarchive.today",TV do Minho, 8 May 2013.(in Portuguese)Accessed 17 June 2014.
  34. ^Hatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: The OK! Magazine Award - Best Use of Photography".Brand Republic.Retrieved28 April2014.
  35. ^abHatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: The Guardian Award - Best Advertisement in National Newspapers".Campaign.Retrieved28 April2014.
  36. ^Hatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: The Northcliffe Newspapers Award - Best Advertisement in Regional Newspapers".Campaign.Retrieved28 April2014.
  37. ^Hatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: The Management Today Award - Best Motor Advertisement".Campaign.Retrieved28 April2014.
  38. ^Hatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: Campaign Gold Award - Best Press Advertising Campaign".Campaign.Retrieved28 April2014.
  39. ^Hatfield, Stefano (26 March 1999)."Campaign Press Advertising Awards 1999: The Reader's Digest Association Award - Best Advertisement in Consumer Magazines".Brand Republic.Retrieved28 April2014.
  40. ^"Bronze Honours 2004".Creative Circle.Retrieved29 April2014.
  41. ^"Flogging a Dead Horse".British Council.Archived fromthe originalon 4 March 2014.Retrieved24 April2014.

External links[edit]

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