Marc Atkins
"Fundamentally my work is about a journey. Through vast landscapes, entangled roads, and buildings of myriad rooms, I puzzle at the qualities of experience, perceptual misunderstanding, the elegant and desolate, and the disturbing nature of beauty. I am enticed by fleeting moments of intrigue, points of intricacies, a shift in shadows, and the fissures within the certainties of location. My images are of encounters with a curious world, a curtain momentarily blows open and a glance of light exposes the activity of a room, indistinct characters fall from the unlit corners of a street, texts from a forgotten book stream from the page, nebulous structures become distinct sculptural forms, frames of a lost film escape to become their own narrative, a silent performance of lives plays out in hidden settings. Observations form oblique impressions, casting images which at once begin generating their own stories, seeping out over time into the world. The veil rests closed, the image is held."
- Marc Atkins
Marc Atkins is an English artist, photographer, videographer and poet.
Marc has lived and worked for many years in London, and has also spent extended periods of time in Rome, Detroit, New York, Warsaw and Paris.
As an artist he has exhibited in many galleries, including the Royal Academy of Arts, London , Royal British Society of Sculptors, London , and the National Portrait Gallery, London
Atkins has presented his work and ideas on the image at lectures and conferences at venues such as the Royal Academy, London , UEL School of Architecture, London , Royal College of Art, London , Instytut Mikołów ski, Poland , the New York University, Paris , The Photographers' Gallery, London , Université de Liège, Belgium and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University .
His images have been acquired for public and private collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, London , The Tate, London and the University of Cambridge.
His solo photography books include The Teratologists, Liquid City, Faces of Mathematics, Thirteen and Warzsawa. See publications.
His work is included in several international photography compilations including The World's Top Photographers: Nudes and Nudes, (which also includes work by Guy Bourdin, Bettina Rheims, Robert Mapplethorpe and Rankin), and has also been published and reviewed in magazines worldwide.
Marc's prose poetry has been published in three collections The Logic of the Stairwell (Shearsman), The Prism Walls (Contraband) and Silent Street (Shearsman), for further information see publications page