Craig Easton (photographer)

Easton was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Liverpool. ==Life and work==

He began his photography career working as a photojournalist at The Independent newspaper in the early 1990s. For an article in 1992, Easton made black and white photographs of the Williams family in Blackpool that "exposed Thatcherism's legacy of child poverty." using a large format film camera, references the early social documentary photography of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. In 1843, Hill and Adamson photographed the Newhaven fishwives who processed caught fish. Easton's project follows the historical trail of itinerant workers who followed the traditional herring fleet, from Unst in Shetland to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Fisherwomen documents, in colour, the connection between previous generations and contemporary workers, still largely women, now almost all working indoors in processing factories and smokehouses. From 2016 to 2020, he again found and photographed three generations of the same Williams family in the North of England, in a series in colour about the inter-generational nature of poverty and economic hardship. His black and white portraits, and occasional landscapes, made within about a 500 m radius, highlight social deprivation, housing, unemployment and immigration. The work is accompanied by text by local writer and researcher Abdul Aziz Hafiz. The series is part of an initiative by Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, called Kick Down the Barriers, in which artists and writers collaborate with residents of Blackburn in representing their community. The initiative is a response to a 2007 BBC Panorama TV programme that claimed Blackburn was "one of the most segregated towns in Britain". This view has persisted in media representation of the town ever since, but locals refute it. Easton is using an 8×10 large format film camera for the work. It was published as a book in 2022. Sixteen was a group photography project conceived and led by Easton where by he and fifteen other photographers collaborated with 16-year-olds from various social backgrounds all around the UK. The young people responded to questions about what it means to be sixteen. "The work challenges the notion of meritocracy and examines how social background, ethnicity, gender, location, education, health etc all influence what young people think they can achieve in life." The other photographers were Linda Brownlee, David Copeland, Lottie Davies, Jillian Edelstein, Stuart Freedman, Sophie Gerrard, Kalpesh Lathigra, Roy Mehta, Christopher Nunn, Kelly O'Brien, Kate Peters, Michelle Sank, Abbie Trayler-Smith, Simon Roberts and Robert C Brady. The work was shown in galleries and outdoors all over the UK in 2019/20. ==Publications==

Publications by Easton • Fisherwomen. Ten O'Clock Books, 2020. Edition of 500 copies. The book was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook Award, 2022, Rencontres d'Arles Book Award, 2022 and the Kraszna-Krausz book award, 2023 • ''Thatcher's Children.'' GOST Books. 2022 – with an essay by Jack Shenker. • An Extremely Un-get-atable Place, 2025 GOST Books, 2025 – with an afterword by Richard Blair, son of George Orwell. Publications with others • Sheepfolds. Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art,1996. With Andy Goldsworthy. • 52 Weekends by the Sea. Virgin, 2010. With Brigid Benson. . ==Awards==

• 2012: Overall winner, Travel Photographer of the Year, UK, with 2 photographs from Sixteen • 2017: Finalist, Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, London • 2021: Photographer of the Year, Sony World Photography Awards, London. A $25,000 prize. • 2021: Winner, Portraiture category, Sony World Photography Awards, London • 2023: The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, Maine Media • 2023: Special Prize for long term commitment to 'Exposing Britain's Social Evils', Orwell Prize ==Exhibitions==

Solo exhibitions • Fisherwomen, Montrose Museum, Montrose, Angus, Scotland, 2019; Time & Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth, England, 2021, Oriel Colwyn, Colwyn Bay, Wales, 2022 Shetland Museum & Archive, Lerwick, Scotland, 2023. • Fisherwomen, DATMA, New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA, 2021 • Homeless: Eight stories from Buckinghamshire, England, Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury, England, 2022 Wycombe Arts Centre, High Wycombe, England 2022 • Bank Top, Somerset House, London, England, 2022, The New Adelphi Gallery, Salford, England 2023 • Craig Easton: Is Anybody Listening?, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, England, 2023. Left Coast, Blackpool, England, 2023 The Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, England, 2024 • ''Thatcher's Children'', The New Adelphi Gallery, Salford, England, 2023 • Return to Mingulay, Wardlaw Museum, St. Andrews, Scotland, 2023-2024 • Havens: Stories and Portraits from NHS Lothian, Stills Centre for Photography, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2024 with Lottie Davies • An Extremely Un-get-atable Place, Ropes & Twines, Liverpool, England, 2025 Group exhibitions • Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2017-2018. • Sixteen, HOME, Manchester, 2019; Format Festival, Derby Market Hall, Derby, 2019;Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 2019; Coed Pella, Colwyn Bay, during Northern Eye festival, 2019; Ellesmere Port Library, Ellesmere Port, 2019; outside in Lerwick, Shetland, 2019; outside Parkside Gallery, Birmingham City University, 2019; Belfast Exposed, Belfast, 2019; outside in Trongate, Glasgow, 2020; Photofusion, London • Tales from the Colony Room: Art & Bohemia, Dellasposa Gallery, London, England 2020 • Kick Down the Barriers, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, 2020. Included Bank Top, photographs by Easton and text by Abdul Aziz Hafiz. • Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London, England, 2022. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2023. • Bank Top, The Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, USA, 2023 • Wonderland - The Joy of Analogue Photography, 1955-1995, Yorkton Workshops, London, England 2025 • Manifest Destiny, The Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, USA, 2026 ==Collections==

Easton's work is held in the following permanent collection: • Hull Maritime Museum, Hull: selected works from Fisherwomen • Salford University Art Collection, Salford: Sixteen, • University of St Andrews Library Special Collections, St Andrews: selected works from Fisherwomen ==References==