Anna Fox: Capturing the ordinary

Anna Fox, whose work will be on display at the Chennai Photo Biennale 2019, goes beyond the bizarre and exotic to focus on the mundane

From the ‘Country Girls’ series that will be on show at the Chennai Photo Biennale 2019

When Anna Fox first set out with her camera, she began with very ordinary subject matters: shopping, leisure time, office life. “I wanted to break the mould of documentary photography, and chose to photograph the ordinary and the everyday; things that were appearing as opposed to disappearing. I’m very interested in women’s lives, rural life, and the power of carnival/local ritual,” says the British photographer.

Rising stars

• Chinar Shah (India) is making powerful social comments about Indian life today; she is not afraid of confronting her audience. Her photography is bold and frequently surprising
• Natasha Caruana (UK) makes work about modern love. For the project, Married Man, she dated over 80 men who had advertised as married men wanting mistresses.
• Marilene Ribeiro (Brazil) breaks the boundaries of traditional documentary photography by collaborating with her subjects and getting them to actively take part in the storytelling. Her current work, Dead Water, looks at three hydroelectric projects in Brazil, and the way these have changed the lives of the people who live near them.
• Maria Kapajeva (Estonia/UK) uses photography, video and textiles to make work about cultural identity and gender, with an emphasis on revealing forgotten stories. She works with histories that grow out of a collection of vernacular photography that she finds in archives, old family albums, on the Internet or in flea markets.

This led to work like the Country Girls series, made in collaboration with singer/songwriter Alison Goldfrapp, which will be on display at the Chennai Photo Biennale later this month. The highly-charged colour photographs, she says, “narrate dark tales from the problem of violence against women in the rural South of England. It was a response to our experiences of growing up in the countryside in the late 1970s”. The images are designed deliberately to be part disconcerting (Gothic fairytale style) and part glamourous ( Vogue 1970s style), she explains.

India calling

How does she think a largely conservative Indian viewer would react to something as stark as her work? “It is always the case that some will like the work while others will not. I expect some people might find it disconcerting; this is because it is disconcerting,” she says. It is not unfamiliar territory for Fox, who has been a regular visitor to the country since 2006 (although her first trip here was in 1984).

“I’m working collaboratively with artist Chinar Shah to make a major project on women’s lives in India, which we hope to publish by 2021. I also teach and consult here at NID, Shristi School of Art, Design and Technology, and at The One School, Goa. I love the photography world here, it is friendly and the photographers are creating amazing work,” she smiles, adding that she particularly loves the work of Dyanita Singh, Sunil Gupta and Gauri Gill.

“As a woman, I found it incredibly liberating to be able to be saying the things I was saying with photography,” says Anna Fox

Girl power

Fox first used a “decent camera” when she was 14 years old, thanks to her father, a keen amateur photographer who encouraged her to use his cameras and learn how to print in his darkroom. “I was inspired by books by Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget. The way photography gave you access to interesting subject and places was exciting. As a woman, I found it incredibly liberating to be able to be saying the things I was saying with photography,” she recalls.

Knowing the freedom that comes with being able to express herself through her work, she and mentor Karen Knorr started Fast Forward. They had discussed the shocking lack of visibility for women photographers in the publishing and exhibiting worlds. The project started in 2014 with a panel discussion at Tate Modern, and focusses on showcasing the best of emerging and established photography by women from across the world (see box). “We hope to train women further in networking skills as well as in building confidence — the photography skills are all there,” she says.

In November/December 2019, Tate Modern in London, along with Fast Forward, will host an international conference titled ‘How Do Women Work’. The call for papers is open till March 1. To participate, e-mail a 500 word abstract and CV or your webpage link to fastforward@ucreative.ac.uk. (Details: fastforward.photography)

Once she wraps up her work at CPB, Fox is off on a road trip with two other women, a curator and a photographer. “We will end up at the Kochi Biennale. Then I go to China for my two-person show, Another Way of Telling with Karen Knorr at OCAT in Xi’An,” she says, after which she heads back to her students at the University for the Creative Arts. Another India trip is also on the cards: “I will be back here photographing in April,” she signs off.

From February 22 to March 24. Details: chennaiphotobiennale.com