Biography
Andrew John Jackson is a photographer, writer and educator, at University of the Arts London, who sits on the advisory panel of The Photo Ethics Centre. Whilst originally from the UK, which many of his photographic explorations still focus on, he is now based in Montreal, Canada.
Jackson's works are held in the United Kingdom Government Art Collection, The Garman Ryan Permanent Collection, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Cadbury Trust, Autograph and Light Work collections besides other public and private collections of art.
He has been a recipient of the month-long Light Work / Autograph ABP (AIR) International Photography Residency in Syracuse, New York, and is a graduate of the MA Documentary Photography program at Newport in Wales. He has been shortlisted for the Elliott Erwitt Fellowship as well as being a nominee for the Prix Pictet award.
His works interrogate notions of place, belonging and selfhood, within intimate and personal interventions which focus on the themes of family, migration, displacement, trauma and collective memory, but also seek to question and challenge how photography has traditionally narrated and represented stories of the diaspora.
As the art historian Professor Eddie Chambers has written, “British life has had the disastrous effect of immigrants not being routinely regarded as sensitive human beings, but being instead cast as vexatious problems. Jackson’s work restores humanity to people from whom this critical characteristic has been routinely withheld or withdrawn. And in restoring humanity, a thousand stories of life can be, and are, told.”
Current ongoing works include the Arts Council Funded series Across The Sea is a Shore a collection of four photographic works which explore the intergenerational legacies of migration to the UK from the Caribbean between Windrush and Brexit. A monograph of the first work in this series, From a Small Island will be published in 2022.
In addition, Jackson is also working on Such is the Pathway which explores the ways trauma has shaped one family still living with the events of one night four months before the end of the Second World War.
Jackson is the co-founder and co-director of ReFramed, a UK based organisation which creates opportunities for artists from Black, Asian and other racialised communities to engage with photography.
His work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Financial Times, Bild, New Statesman.
As a full member of Diversify Photo, he is available for commission.
Education
MA - Documentary Photography:
Newport School of Art and Design, University of Wales.
Achievement: Distinction
BA Photography:
The University of Wolverhampton
Achievement: First Class (Hons)
PGCE/FAHE: TeacherTraining,
The University of Wolverhampton
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Public Collections
United Kingdom Government Art Collection
Work from From a Small Island
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Work from From a Small Island
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum: Permanent Collection
From a Small Island (2 works)
The Garman Ryan permanent collection: New Art Gallery, Walsall:
All that it was…all that it is (8 works)
National Photographic Archive; Birmingham Central Library:
When the Curtain Rises (32 works Black and white hand prints 10x8 boxed)
Echoes from the Frontlines (20 works, C-Type prints 16x12)
All that it was…all that it is (38 works, Digital C-Type prints 12 x 10)
Cadbury Trust Archive
The Promise of the City; (36 works, Digital C-Type prints)
Autograph ABP
Portfolio box from From a Small Island
Light Works (Syracuse University)
2 x 24 x 20 prints from From a Small Island series