Twelve photographers
PETER MARLOW
Born 1952, Kenilworth, UK. Lives and works in London.
Peter Marlow studied psychology at Manchester University before embarking on his career as a photojournalist. He initially helped finance this activity by taking a job as a cruise line photographer in 1975 on an Italian ship in the Caribbean. Marlow spent most of 1976 taking photographs while traveling through Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, and up to New York.
He then became part of the newly formed Sygma agency and worked on news and feature subjects in Africa, Central and South America, and the Eastern bloc. In 1980, Peter Marlow joined Magnum Photos, becoming a full member in 1986 and president of the photo agency from 1990 to 1994.
With Magnum, he continued to work internationally for many of the world’s leading magazines. His most important projects, however, have focused on contemporary life in his own country: his black-and-white project on Liverpool, for instance, made over a period of six years, has been widely regarded as the defining work on social decay in Great Britain during the Thatcher years. Encompassing the physical and social landscape of Britain, Peter Marlow’s work has become highly recognizable for its peculiar sense of atmosphere, as it points out the anonymous places where life is acted out.
In 1991 he was asked to do a series on the French city of Amiens. This assignment became an opportunity to start working in medium format. He decided to convey his vision of the town’s surreal absence of character by giving inconsequential details center stage and forgetting his usual sense of narrative. In a very similar vein, he completed a body of photographs over the course of the 1990s for a yet unpublished book entitled Non Places. Peter Marlow is also well known for his unique collaboration with Tony Blair,
© Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos
which has allowed him to achieve an original behind-the-scenes portrayal of modern politics.
As his work has evolved over the last ten years, he has retained the medium format but he now mostly works in color; the color of incidental things has become central to his pictures. Today, Peter Marlow is working as much abroad as at home. He recently completed several series on urban life in Japan, France, Spain, and Greece.
Awards (selection):
1982 Arts Council of Great Britain Award.
1986 National Headliner Award.
1988 The Photographers’ Gallery Award.
1999 Premio de Creación Fotografica Luis Ksado.
Exhibitions (selection):
1979 The Ultra Right in Europe, The Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
1983 London by Night, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK.
1993 Looking Out to Sea, Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK; Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK.
1999 Ancient Kumano Roads and Roads to Santiago de Compostela Spain, galleries in Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Wakayama, Japan.
2001 Millennium, Rhodes, Greece.
Publications (selection):
Département Somme. Trois Cailloux, Amiens, 1992.
Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea. Jonathan Cape, London, 1993.
Ancient Kumano Roads and Roads to Santiago. A&A Publishing, Tokyo, 1999
Peter Marlow studied psychology at Manchester University before embarking on his career as a photojournalist. He initially helped finance this activity by taking a job as a cruise line photographer in 1975 on an Italian ship in the Caribbean. Marlow spent most of 1976 taking photographs while traveling through Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, and up to New York.
He then became part of the newly formed Sygma agency and worked on news and feature subjects in Africa, Central and South America, and the Eastern bloc. In 1980, Peter Marlow joined Magnum Photos, becoming a full member in 1986 and president of the photo agency from 1990 to 1994.
With Magnum, he continued to work internationally for many of the world’s leading magazines. His most important projects, however, have focused on contemporary life in his own country: his black-and-white project on Liverpool, for instance, made over a period of six years, has been widely regarded as the defining work on social decay in Great Britain during the Thatcher years. Encompassing the physical and social landscape of Britain, Peter Marlow’s work has become highly recognizable for its peculiar sense of atmosphere, as it points out the anonymous places where life is acted out.
In 1991 he was asked to do a series on the French city of Amiens. This assignment became an opportunity to start working in medium format. He decided to convey his vision of the town’s surreal absence of character by giving inconsequential details center stage and forgetting his usual sense of narrative. In a very similar vein, he completed a body of photographs over the course of the 1990s for a yet unpublished book entitled Non Places. Peter Marlow is also well known for his unique collaboration with Tony Blair,
© Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos
which has allowed him to achieve an original behind-the-scenes portrayal of modern politics.
As his work has evolved over the last ten years, he has retained the medium format but he now mostly works in color; the color of incidental things has become central to his pictures. Today, Peter Marlow is working as much abroad as at home. He recently completed several series on urban life in Japan, France, Spain, and Greece.
Awards (selection):
1982 Arts Council of Great Britain Award.
1986 National Headliner Award.
1988 The Photographers’ Gallery Award.
1999 Premio de Creación Fotografica Luis Ksado.
Exhibitions (selection):
1979 The Ultra Right in Europe, The Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
1983 London by Night, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK.
1993 Looking Out to Sea, Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK; Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK.
1999 Ancient Kumano Roads and Roads to Santiago de Compostela Spain, galleries in Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Wakayama, Japan.
2001 Millennium, Rhodes, Greece.
Publications (selection):
Département Somme. Trois Cailloux, Amiens, 1992.
Liverpool: Looking Out to Sea. Jonathan Cape, London, 1993.
Ancient Kumano Roads and Roads to Santiago. A&A Publishing, Tokyo, 1999