Seen But Not Heard

“Few questions are more contentious in modern day Britain than those involving children” wrote Simon Bainbridge, editor of the BJP, in June 2005. Since then, photographing and exhibiting images of children has become even more of a legal minefield as parents are reported to the police by high street processing labs, press photographers are stopped from photographing children playing in the snow and renowned artists, such as Tierney Gearon and Nan Goldin, have had their work removed from exhibitions, all under the pretext of child abuse, paedophilia and ‘inappropriate’ images of children.

Julia Fullerton Batten’s ‘Teenage Stories’ was motivated by her own experience as a teenager. Using childish scenes of a model village Fullerton Batten produces dreamlike narratives where size dominates our perspective.

Vee Speers also mixes references to childish games with her series ‘The Birthday Party’ inviting her daughter and friends to dress up as their imaginary heroes or role models. Speers’ interest lies as much in showing us the inventiveness of a child’s imagination as well as asking the viewer to bring their own memories of childhood to create a personal narrative of the photographs.

Edmund Clark and Michelle Sank combat the difficulty of obtaining access to their subjects by working with NGO and governmental bodies working with children. In ‘Baby Fathers’, Clarke challenges our preconceptions of the feckless young males, unwilling to face the consequences of their actions and through the intimacy of fatherhood presents a series of portraits emphasising physical intimacy that take us beyond the stereotype.

Michelle Sank first started photographing adolescents in 2001 and in her latest work, ‘Interface’ she explores how Sikh and Muslim teenagers in the city of Wolverhampton, explore issues of identity and gender religion through their dress.

Like Sank and Clark, Simon Wheatley in his work, ‘Don’t call me Urban It’s Grime’, has gone in search of the truth about our feral children and ‘hoodies’. Without the aid of youth clubs, Wheatley sought his subject on the streets of South London, where gangs increasingly control the lives of the teenagers. Posed and observed, this work gives a human face to an uncomfortable subject.

In ‘Playground’, Ali Richards documents the pursuits of teenagers and their engagement with a society that seems to have failed them. Often fuelled by boredom and disenfranchisement, teenagers seek their own destructive entertainment through joyriding and burning stolen cars.

Wiebke Leister’s series ‘Hals über Kopf’ looks at the relation between tickler, ticklee and photographer. Liester’s interest lies in the ambiguity of laughter not just as pleasurable and exhilarating but also as despair and pain. When children are tickled it becomes unbearable yet, they return moments later to be tickled again. In capturing a moment when the child´s laugh is not simply joyful, it explores the gap between (invisible) emotion and (visible) expression.

With the help of children in his neighbourhood in Germany, Jan von Holleben’s series ‘Dreams of Flying’ is a playful expression of the innocence of childhood and the games we all played. Inspired by children’s stories and superheroes, Holleben’s photographs make nostalgic dreams come true

Clare Richardson’s ‘Harlemville’ also evokes a nostalgic sense of innocence. Richardson spent several months in a rural community where children are educated according to the principles of Rudolph Steiner, whose encouragement of free expression, creativity and play allows children to act without inhibitions, allowing them to explore their imaginative world.

Seen But Not Heard
The Courtyard Centre for the Arts
Edgar Street
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