John Blythe

I have been a professional photographer for over 20 year. After completing my professional studies at City of Westminster College, London, I started my career working in several studios in Central London, learning from exceptional photographers and developing my skills and ideas, which lead onto a career photographing interiors, food, still life and portraiture for Advertising and Design Agencies worldwide. I have retired from commercial photography to concentrate on developing my art practice and to teach. Having completed a PTTLS in 2010 and a PGDip(Ed) Artist Teacher Scheme in 2016 I am now studying for Master of Art in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University. From 2013-2017 I was Module Leader of Photography at Bellerbys College Oxford, teaching the Foundation and A Level courses and am now Co-ordinator and Teacher of A Level Photography at d'Overbroecks Sixth Form College, Oxford. Situated in and around the realm of light based image making, my art practice focuses on the familiar and unfamiliar in the (often repetitive) daily experiences of life, the physical interactions involved in moving from place to place and internally to places of memory, sensation and the ineffable. I interrogate the material, experiential and perceptual nature of these interactions through a practice of attending to the present moment. I see my work existing as an intermedium between still image, time based media and sound, digital and analogue, process and concept. My interest is as much in the making as in the subject. I explore the conceptual possibilities of the making process in photography bringing it closer to performance, broadening the potentiality to explore connections between process and meaning. My practice is informed and supported through the integration of my artist teacher identities. I am committed to the value art brings to both individuals and communities, not just engagement with works of art but perhaps more so, the practice of art. I am particularly interested in the role art practice can play in developing analytical thinking, critical discourse, political awareness and shared experiences in the wider community. Oxfordshire