© Niamh Swanton
We’re delighted to introduce you to Niamh Swanton, the winner of the Shutter Hub Portfolio Award at FORMAT 2024.
Shutter Hub Creative Director, Karen Harvey, selected Niamh’s portfolio, including the images showcased here, which explore and question what it truly means to be human.
© Niamh Swanton
© Niamh Swanton
I am thrilled and extremely grateful to have been chosen as this year’s winner of the Shutter Hub Portfolio Award. Stepping into any creative industry can be daunting. It’s a vast and expansive landscape, at times it can be overwhelming. Shutter Hub has managed to create a space where you can easily navigate and network on a very personal and connected level, reaching all parts of the globe.
I also have great admiration for how dedicated Shutter Hub is to creating fair and easy access to photography through the opportunities and support they offer artists whilst still managing to maintain a unique and personal experience to all forms of photographers.
I am so excited to begin this journey with Shutter Hub and I am looking forward to learning and growing along the way.
My work is concerned with the human condition and a personal obsession with questioning what it truly means to be human. My goal throughout creating this work is to build tangible forms of the thoughts and emotions that make up these key events of human life. The sense of impending doom, all those forgotten feelings of promise, the longing for love or cynicism that comes from heartbreak. Each series of images I create deals with these topics and the response we might have when experiencing them.
I use myself as the main subject throughout the work as the work takes on the role of being semi-autobiographical. I obscure my face throughout my images. By doing this I hope to create more of an ambiguous scene. By removing the face, you remove the identity, preventing the viewer from becoming estranged to the work. The use of dream symbolism in the images embody an idiosyncratic view of the topics in question. Yet, the use of colour, humour and everyday objects allow for a connection and a sense of familiarity whist also introducing a touch of levity.
A big driving force behind my work is the philosophical movement, Absurdism. Implying searching for meaning in a meaningless world is in itself absurd. One will never be able to find out what it’s truly about, but I will carry on with questioning the futility of life, without attaching myself to a sense of foreboding. Instead, I want to take it in, in all its damaged glory. I want to celebrate the good whilst saluting the bad.
© Niamh Swanton
© Niamh Swanton
© Niamh Swanton
© Niamh Swanton
See more of Niamh’s work in her Shutter Hub portfolio and on her website.
Got any questions? Email us at info@shutterhub.org.uk
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