Anna Fox- Colour documentaries
Anna Fox was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2019 when her "combative, highly charged use of flash and colour" was an indicator of what her work had achieved. It is probably not hard to guess that, when she completed her degree in photography at the West Surry College of Art and Design, one of her tutors was Martin Parr. She was also heavily influenced by Paul Reas, Paul Seawright and Paul Graham as some of the stream of new colourists who were starting to use colour in some startling and striking ways. But she was also influenced by the documentary style of Chris Killip, a Manxman, who recorded life in Tyneside during the late 70's and 80's and who was a visiting lecturer to her college during her degree.
Her style has always had a documentary edge even though her subjects may not always seem to lend themselves to that tradition in photography. Her first significant publication came in 1988 with "Work Stations: Office Life in London". Shot on a Plaubel Makina 6x7 camera with a Metz flash unit and bounce card it cannot have been easy to gain a sense of intimacy with her subjects in the sometimes crowded spaces they inhabit. "Friendly Fire" followed quickly and considered the pastime of paintball battles waged at weekends. The pictures often feature the red marks left by the exploding paintballs and Fox was fascinated that, in the political climate of the time and during and after the Falklands conflict, such recreational activity was seen by many as both desirable and a suitable way for people to express themselves. For her it also echoed the battles taking place in the offices she had photographed and was especially applicable when held as a corporate event. However in the end she realised that " while my subjects were playing war games I was enjoying playing a war photographer."
Moving back to the village in West Sussex that her grandmother had lived in she set out to examine the myth of the village as a rural idyll. Her interviews proved that it really wasn't and the photographs certainly suggest otherwise. When she eventually showed the work it had a soundscape added which consisted not only of a BBC recording of village sounds but of overlaid phrases and fragments from the interviews Fox had conducted - "Only housework for women; We are an island; We don't see those sort of people round here; We are sending toys to Romania; If you listen carefully you can hear the voice of God; Don't forget the children."
A retrospective, 300 page book was published by Photoworks in 2007 "Anna Fox; Photographs 1983 - 2007".
Anna Fox continued with her Zwarte Piet series made between 1993 and 1998, published as the book Zwarte Piet, which documents 'black face' folk culture traditions in the Netherlands. The book is now out of print. Between 2001 and 2003 she published four monographs in her "Made in" series: Made in Milton Keynes, Made in Kansas, Made in Gothenberg and Made in Florence. From 2009, Fox photographed for two years at Butlins in Bognor Regis for her book Resort 1 - Butlin's Bognor Regis, Following with Resort II.
Now turned sixty she continues to work on documentary social themes and you will find her website here. David Chandler, in his essay Vile Bodies, said Fox is "widely regarded as an important part of what might be called the 'second wave' of British colour documentary photography" and that she "helped form its particular style of combative, highly charged use of flash and colour." She is well worth investigating if you do not know her work and it is likely her legacy of photographing Britain will be long lived. Anna Fox is currently works as Head of Photography at the University of the Creative Arts in Farnham.
