Dewi Lewis Publishing releases Burnthouse Lane by Michelle Sank.
The Burnthouse Lane estate was first dreamt up by Exeter Council in the idealistic 1920s to rehouse impoverished people from the West Quarter slum. Designed along Garden City lines and purposely self-contained, it was a place to live for working-class families. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy scheme meant that some of the properties became privately owned, but Burnthouse Lane is still referred to as a council estate. The deprivation it was supposed to overcome has continued to haunt it, but the isolated nature of the estate and its intricate labyrinth of lanes, have also made for positives, such as a close-knit community and a sense of solidarity among the residents.
Michelle Sank has developed an international reputation for her powerful environmental portraits. She has published four previous books and has exhibited widely across the world. Born in South Africa, Michelle Sank settled in the UK in 1987. She cites this background as informing her interest in sub-cultures and the exploration of contemporary social issues and challenges. Her crafted portraits and landscapes meld place and person creating sociological, visual and psychological narratives.
The photographer David Goldblatt wrote about her portraiture that there is “an unstrained yet visually sophisiticated synthesis of subject and context… people are not typecast or stereotyped; they are just‘ordinary’. They seem completely themselves, Sank has allowed each of them simply to be … something has been evoked that seems to come from deep within… it is the unique spirit of the other person”.
Burnthouse Lane is introduced by Diane Smyth, the editor of BJP. Diane has also written for The Guardian, FT Weekend Magazine, Creative Review, Aperture, FOAM, Aesthetica and Apollo. She has also curated exhibitions for institutions such as The Photographers Gallery and Lianzhou Foto Festival.
Michelle Sank : Burnthouse Lane
Dewi Lewis Publishing
quarter bound hardback
120 pages / 78 colour plates / 245mm x 280mm
ISBN: 978-1-916915-05-3
£35.00
www.dewilewis.com
