Edmund Clark HonFRPS is a British artist and photographer whose work explores politics, representation, incarceration and control. His research based work combines a range of references and forms including bookmaking, installations, photography, video, documents, text and found images and material. Several of his projects explore the War on Terror. [1]
His notable projects include Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out, [2] [3] Control Order House, [4] [5] [6] The Mountains of Majeed, [7] [8] [9] and Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition (in collaboration with researcher and writer Crofton Black). [10] [11] Edmund Clark's awards include the 2009 International Photography Award from The British Journal of Photography, [12] 2016 Rencontres d'Arles Photo-Text Book Award [13] and 2017 Infinity Award in Documentary and Photojournalism category from International Center of Photography. [14] In 2018 Clark was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Edmund Clark was the Ikon Gallery's artist-in-residence at Europe's only wholly therapeutic community prison, HM Prison Grendon from 2014 until 2018. Supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, the residency culminated in the publication of My Shadow's Reflection (Ikon Gallery: Birmingham and Here Press: London) and a solo exhibition In Place of Hate at Ikon Gallery. [15] [16] [17]
Clark worked as a researcher in London and Brussels before gaining a postgraduate diploma in photojournalism at London College of Communication. [18]
He gained access to Guantanamo Bay detention camp and to a house under a control order (housing an individual held under the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011). His book Control Order House is his response to a period he spent staying in a house with a man known as 'CE' who had been placed under a Control Order due to his suspected involvement with terrorist-related activity. Clark spent three days working in the house taking a large number of quick, uncomposed photographs surveying the site. These images, along with architectural plans of the house, redacted documents relating to the case and a diary kept by 'CE' form a portrait of sorts: of the site and its inhabitant and of the structure of legal restriction imposed and represented by the house. [19]