Neville seems to be classified as a social documentary photographer, based in London and works in both photography and film. He captures the very essence of British working life. His best know work and the one that has drawn me to he is work, style and ethos is Port Glasgow. In this project he managed to capture a town going through a depression of the local industry. The book was published and not sold for his own benefit but every resident in the town, some eight thousand were given a copy to do with what they wanted. Not every one was happy with this and some residents burnt their copies. This giving back to the community is a very important part of his work and in a similar way I would like to do the same for the people of Ngawi.
In a comparable way to my Body of Work on Ngawi, Neville’s project ‘Parade’ is a portrait of a community which has farming as a way of life. In the case of Ngawi it’s cray fishing. In this project Neville drew parallels between the region of France he was in and the UK. The French region of Brittany uses the Breton language which is made up of six Celtic languages. Along with the historic links between the two countries there were also political as this was the time Brexit was announced. In an interview with the British Journal of Photography (26/02/2020) (accessed 27/04/2020):
“It was a mirroring British identity in a strange way,” says Neville. “It is a small regional area, but it’s got this huge sense of identity.” “There is a real sense in which agriculture, and even more than that people’s relationships to animals, is absolutely fundamental to how they live,” says Neville. “It was wonderful for me to see this, all these relationships going on between people and animals.”
His work in Helmand, Afghanistan resulted in him experiencing PTSD. “It still makes me cry when I talk about it,” says Neville, “I came back, as anyone would, traumatised”. “This idea that somehow you can have a seamless transition from being in a war zone to walking down Old Street — not possible,” says Neville. “You can put a cat in a field and let bombs off around it all day, the cat might survive, but it won’t be the same animal anymore, it will be changed for life.” (BJP 2020)
Bibliography
Websites (accessed 27/04/2020)
https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/talks-and-events/artist-talk-mark-neville
https://www.bjp-online.com/2020/02/mark-neville-deutsche-borse-parade/
Michele Usher 