Paddy Summerfield Explained

Paddy Summerfield
Birth Date:18 February 1947
Birth Place:Derby, England
Education:Oxford Polytechnic (1965–1966); Guildford School of Art (1966–1968)

Paddy Summerfield (18 February 1947 – 11 April 2024) was a British photographer who lived and worked in Oxford all his life.[1]

Summerfield is known for his "evocative series of black and white images, shot on 35mm film, which co-opt the traditional genre of documentary photography to realise a more personal and inward looking vision." He has said his photographs are exclusively about abandonment and loss.

Life and career

Paddy Summerfield was born on 18 February 1947.[2] After taking an Art Foundation course at the Oxford Polytechnic, Summerfield attended Guildford School of Art, studying firstly in the Photography Department, then joining the Film department[3] the following year. In 1967, when still a first-year student, he made photographs that appeared in 1970 in Bill Jay's magazine Album.[4] Between 1968 and 1978, Summerfield documented Oxford University students in the summer terms. His pictures published in Creative Camera, and on its cover in January 1974, were recognised as psychological and expressionist, unusual in an era of journalistic and documentary photography. Throughout his life, Summerfield has focused on making photographic essays that are personal documents. From 1997 to 2007 he photographed his parents, his mother with Alzheimer's disease and his father caring for her.

Like It Is was Summerfield's first London exhibition, a group show in Dixon's Photographic Gallery, Oxford Street, in 1967. Since then, his work has been exhibited at other London venues, including the ICA Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery, the Barbican, and The Photographers' Gallery in its Newport Street home. When Nicholas Serota was director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, he offered Summerfield the opportunity to exhibit Beneath the Dreaming Spires, his first one-man show, in 1976.

During his early career, he was awarded several Arts Council grants.

Summerfield died on 11 April 2024, at the age of 77.[5] [6]

Publications

Books by Summerfield

Smaller publications by Summerfield

Publications with others

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Film about Summerfield

Collections

Notes

  1. Web site: Mother & Father: A Portrait of Loss. 31 August 2017 . 8 February 2018 . .
  2. Potted biography of Summerfield; in Gerry Badger and John Benton-Harris (ed), Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945–1989 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1989), p. 197.
  3. Web site: Book review: The Oxford Pictures 1968-1978 by Paddy Summerfield. 6 September 2016 . 8 February 2018 . Oliver . Atwell . .
  4. "Paddy Summerfield: New talent", Album, issue 2 (March 1970), pp. 43–45. Jay made a PDF of this available from his website (which no longer exists); here is a 26 April 2012 Wayback Machine copy of this.
  5. Web site: Summerfield Paddy . Oxford Mail . 16 April 2024 . en.
  6. Web site: Obituary: Paddy Summerfield (1947-2024) - 'the most photographic person I have ever known' . British Photographic History . 16 April 2024 . 15 April 2024.
  7. Web site: Mother and Father review – Paddy Summerfield's chronicle of loss and abiding love. Sean. O'Hagan. 2 November 2014. The Guardian.
  8. Web site: The best photography books of 2014. Sean. O'Hagan. 7 December 2014. The Guardian.
  9. Dewi Lewis's page about Mother and Father is here.
  10. Web site: Images that capture the leisure — and loneliness — of college. Hattie. Crisell. 12 July 2016. The New York Times.
  11. Web site: Photographing the long-haired, lovestruck students of 70s Oxford. 27 July 2016. I-D.
  12. Dewi Lewis's page about The Oxford Pictures is here.
  13. Dewi Lewis's page about Empty Days is here.
  14. Dewi Lewis's page about The Holiday Pictures is here.
  15. Dewi Lewis's page about Home Movie is here.
  16. Café Royal's page about Weekend Away is here.
  17. The page about Remember Hope at Photopaper's website is here.
  18. Café Royal's page about Distant Times is here.
  19. Web site: Paddy Summerfield: Empty Days - Exhibitions at OVADA. Eye. Division. www.ovada.org.uk.
  20. Web site: 2020-02-21. The Holiday Pictures by Paddy Summerfield. 22 July 2019.
  21. British Journal of Photography, February 1971
  22. "2008 – Serpentine Photography 73". Arts Council Collection. Retrieved 28 March 2017
  23. Web site: Art Gallery Archive - Barbican. www.barbican.org.uk.
  24. Web site: Oxford 1983 - Arts Council Collection. www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk.
  25. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1059716/photograph/ Record

External links

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