- Venue
- Inn on the Green
- Location
Biddy Partridge is a documentary photographer whose work in Southern Africa during the apartheid era has been featured in the newly published book – Women by Women: 50 Years of
Women's Photography in South Africa. (December 2006). Commissioned by the South African Ministry of Arts and Culture, the book showcases the work of top women photographers,
from the work of early pioneers of social documentary, to the challenging images created by women in South Africa today.
More recently, Biddy has been constructing extraordinary photographic montages revealing colour, patterns and rhythms in the most ordinary of everyday details.
Double Vision brings together these two contrasting sides of Biddy's photography.
Part 1 of the exhibition, Southern Africa in Black and White, presents a series of social portraits from the turbulent last years of apartheid and the glorious optimism of the newly
independent Zimbabwe. In the early 1980s, Biddy spent two years with writer Julie Frederikse photographing and interviewing hundreds of Zimbabweans for the
seminal book None But Ourselves: The Media and the Masses in the Struggle for Zimbabwe. She worked for Staffrider magazine in Johannesburg and was involved in the
founding of Afrapix, the first progressive photo-library/agency in South Africa. Throughout the eighties and nineties she continued her work in Zimbabwe
as a freelance photojournalist and as a musician with the Afrojazz band mhepo. (Listen at www.cdbaby.com/mhepo)
Part 2 of the exhibition, Minor Details, moves into colour, examining relationships between overlooked or unrecognised details of our everyday surroundings.
Sand, water, petals, pavements, railings are the subject of surprisingly thought provoking montages. Biddy's particular passion now is for editing: working with
the pictures to discover the inner relationships between them. This has led on to exploring ways of using the photographs within different formats : from personalized books,
slide shows and prints to small laminated cards that can be arranged and re- arranged on magnetic boards. These have various uses: in the classroom, just for fun,
at exhibitions – for buyers to create their own selection of images to suit different themes or colour schemes.
Biddy is available for interview.
Press enquiries to :
Polly Harvey [email protected] 07851222330
www.biddypartridgephotography.co.uk
www.iotg.co.uk (Inn on the Green)
