TOM HUNTER

TOM HUNTER (1965-)

In 1998, the London-based artist Tom Hunter was awarded the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Prize for Woman Reading a Possession Order, an image of a young woman standing at a window reading an eviction notice with a baby at her side. This work, part his Persons Unknown series, directly references Vermeer's A Girl Reading at the Open Window, using both its composition, color and play of light to produce an image that, as with Vermeer's representations of the Dutch working class, ennobles his subjects.
Hunter's concern with the political issues surrounding the right of "squatters", "travellers" and all those viewed as "outsiders" is reflected in his choice and treatment of his subjects. In 1998 while traveling himself around Europe, Hunter began a new series of portraits entitled Travellers, which focused on the domestic environment of this nomadic group.
In a body of work begun in 1999, collectively entitled Life and Death in Hackney Hunter focused on a community living in and around the Hackney area of London. Many of the photographs in this series are based on Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and in so doing Hunter overlays art historical references with stories from the everyday lives of those around him. This publication brings together these three bodies of work as well as for the first time photographs from his most recent series Swan Songs.

The artist:

Born in Bournemouth in 1965, Hunter studied at The London College of Printing and The Royal College of Art, London. He has exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery, London (1998); the Whitechapel Open, The Tannery, London (1998) and in Neurotic Realism (Part Two), Saatchi Gallery, London (1999). He currently lives and works in London.

Edited by White Cube, texts by Michael Bracewell, Paul Shepheard, essays by Jean Wainwright mit dem Fotografen