There is always something odd – in a good way – about Strand’s work. That oddity rests in the tension between her often personal, always playful take on conceptualism and her wilfully old-fashioned methods.
Ever since its invention in the 19th century, photography has documented life. At the same time, it focuses on inviting audiences to a rather subjective world while trying to be taken seriously as an art form. Photography has always been considered a male-dominated profession, but luckily, things are changing. Scholars, writers, bloggers, photography students, and enthusiasts have been giving due to the female pioneers of the field. Most were always standing and/or hiding in the shadows, oblivious to how much they could claim and accomplish. Arguably, the techniques, concepts, and themes female photographers use differ from those of male photographers. At a time when most women were convinced that their place was in the kitchen and certainly not in the dark room, some were struggling to surpass their male counterparts and work towards gaining respect and recognition for their work.
Clare Strand (British photographer, 1973-) is a UK-based artist who works with but mostly against the photographic medium. She was born in Brighton and studied at North East Surrey College of Technology, University of Brighton, and at Royal College of Art in London, where she gained an MA in Fine Art Photography.
Strand's first exhibition was as part of the touring exhibition The Dead, curated by Val Williams and Greg Hobson, which opened at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in 1995. Over the past 25 years, she has made work with found imagery, kinetic machinery, web programmes, fairground attractions, large-scale paintings, and chamber music. She often rejects the photographic medium's default settings and, without apology, welcomes a subtle, slow-burn approach. Her practice is situated somewhere between control and a wilful acceptance of chance.
Strand has exhibited in venues such as The Museum Folkwang, The Center Pompidou, Tate Britain, Salzburg Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her most recent exhibition, Bugs and Metamorphosis: Glitching Photography, was held in the Hasselblad Center and was curated by Louise Wolther, Hasselblad Foundation, and Nina Mangalanayagam. Strand's work is held in the collections of MOMA, SFMoma, The V&A Museum, The Center Pompidou, The Kunstmuseum, Bonn, The British Council, The McEvoy Collection, The Arts Council, The NY Public Library, The Provincial Collection, The Mead Museum: Cornell University, and elsewhere. The artist has produced four publications to date, including Clare Strand Monograph published by Steidl (2009), Skirts published by GOST (2014), Girl Plays with Snake published by MACK (2017), and Negatives for Fun with Clare Strand Photography published by Multipress (2019).
Strand was one of the four nominees for the Deutsche Borse prize in 2020. She is one half of the creative partnership MacDonaldStrand with her husband Gordon MacDonald. Around 2000-2002, they did commercial work for Sleazenation, contributing photographs for stories. In 2012, they self-published Bad Things Happen to Good People and Most Popular Of All Time.
Strand is considered a photographic artist though hasn't used a camera since 2012, partly as a response to the rapid development and use of digital technology and the proliferation of photographic imagery. Her constantly evolving practice brings together intensive research, deadpan humour, and insights into popular culture, shifting from the mysterious and the absurd to understanding public obsessions, often via trickery and manipulation.
Black and white photographs that would be equally at home in an art gallery, the offices of a scientific institute, or the archive of a dark cult. They look like evidence, but of what we cannot know.
We will continue talking about female names that left their mark on photography and about contemporary female photographers who are still emerging. There are a lot of female photographers out there deserving of praise, and we can only hope to cover as many of them as we can. Please follow this space to find out more.
