Original art for sale

See offers1

Shop original art from independent artists around the world with free 14-day returns

Up to 50% OFF selected artworks
Shop now
Terms apply

Claire Newman-Williams

Joined Artfinder: May 2020

Artworks for sale: 35

(2)

United Kingdom

Updates from Claire Newman-Williams's studio

  • In the studio

    In the studio

    I'm lucky enough to have been able to build a studio in the garden of my house. A difficult commute for me is 3 dogs on the garden path instead of 2! It's a warm, light, inspiring place to be. I don’t use any one camera or process to produce my images. I have a cupboard full of old film cameras; a Brownie Autograph from the early 1900’s, a 1940’s Speed Graphic, old polaroids, plastic Holgas, and 35mm Nikons from the 1970’s. I particularly love working with a process called wet plate or collodion photography, which is a photographic process that was used before film existed. Now when I shoot, I regularly find myself capturing somewhat random images that inspire me at the time, but have no real sense of context. That comes later when I layer together the different elements of a piece to create a narrative. In the moments that I capture the images it’s more like being a collector than a photographer. Combining them later becomes a post-photographic process and this is where the story is told.​

    14 July 2020
    Making Story Boxes

    Making Story Boxes

    Combining original photographic images (usually portraits that I create with old cameras and alternative processes) with found objects, I create collages layered and arranged in antique wooden boxes.  These Story Boxes are intended to be like inner landscapes, addressing the recurrent themes of the smothering of identity and our fear of being seen - truly seen by those around us. I source the boxes themselves from auctions and house clearances and the contents of the box are the ephemera of everyday life, the junk that others throw away: old book covers, flakes of old textured paint, strips of leather, old nails, snippets of newspaper from years past.

    14 July 2020
    Claire at work

    Claire at work

    One process I love to work with is wet plate or collodion photography, a process that was invented in the 1850's. This is a camera that I had custom built, but the lens is a beautiful 1860's brass piece. These optics and the wet-plate collodian process create images that might have been swirled together out of bleak, ancestral memory, or austere dream. Wet-plate often feels like an unwieldy chemistry experiment, and the resulting black-and-white images cleaving to sheets of glass, have nothing to do with digital clarity.

    30 June 2020
×
Would you like 10% off?