THE work of an award-winning Greenfield photographer spanning more than 40 years is being showcased at a special exhibition.
Ian Beesley, who was Gallery Oldham’s artist in residence from 2014 to 2020, presents his retrospective exhibition ‘Life’ at Salts Mill in Saltaire until the end of October.
Edited from his archive of more than 60,000 images, the exhibition includes many of his well-known images but also a large selection of previously unseen work.
It includes the street life, working life, sporting life, rural life and the lives of the people and communities of mainly the North of England.
Much of his early work documents an industrial society that no longer exists, from the tightly packed terraced streets of inner cities to the bustling interiors of the mills and factories.
It charts the closure of many of the core heavy industries such as mining, iron and steel production and forms an important record on the North’s cultural and industrial heritage.
In more recent years his work has concentrated on health and well-being created through his appointment as artist in residence for a number of important medical research projects such as the Bradford Institute for Health research’s Born in Bradford project, the University of Bristol’s research project on ageing and most recently the University of Exeter’s IDEAL and ENLIVEN projects researching the effects of dementia.
Ian, who has lived in Greenfield since 2000, was born in Bradford and worked in a mill, a foundry and the local sewage works before going to Bradford Art College and then Bournemouth and Poole College of Art.
On graduating, he was awarded a Kodak scholarship for social documentation and began his life-time study of the demise of Northern industrial society and its impact on communities.
His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Milan photo festival Italy, the international industrial photography festival Shengyang China, the Imperial war museum London, the national media museum Bradford, the Smithsonian institute Washington and the National coal mining museum Wakefield.
His work is held in the collections of the People’s History Museum Manchester, the Royal Photographic Society, the National Media Museum Bradford, the Smithsonian Institute USA, the National Museum of Labour History Helsinki, Gallery Oldham and the Imperial War Museum.
In 2012 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society and in 2019 an honorary doctorate from the University of Bradford for his significant contribution to the artistic, cultural and social well being of the city of Bradford.
Find out more about the exhibition online: https://saltsmill.org.uk/#history
• Visit Ian Beesley’s ‘Life’ exhibition in the roof space of Salts Mill on Wednesdays to Sundays from 11am to 4pm until the end of October. Admission is free.
Well worth a visit to this exhibition. It’s a moving and at times amusing record of industrial decline and the people caught up in it.