Sunday Gallery presents the first Swiss solo show of British artist Elaine Constantine. Constantine‘s career began – at the age of nineteen, unemployed and without a chance in Thatcher‘s Britain of the 80‘s – when she picked up her aunt‘s camera, in order to photograph her friends from the soul and scooter scene. Soon convinced that she had found her calling, she completed various nationally subsidised training courses in Manchester, before moving to London in 1992 to be Nick Night’s assistant to learn the actual profession of commercial and documentary photography.
After her time as assistant, her pictures regularly appeared in the magazine The Face, London‘s style bible at that time, and her unique approach enabled her to establish herself as one of London‘s most prominent editorial photographers. Strongly influenced by documentary photographers Chris Killip and Martin Parr, Constantine‘s photography confidently eschewed the irony of the contemporary ‚cutting edge‘ fashion photography back then, which in turn enabled her access to international magazines such as Vogue Italia, American Vogue, French Vogue and Vanity Fair.
In her pictures, neither a fixation with adolescent self-abuse nor an obsessive preoccupation with the social reality of the underclass, are discernible. Nor is there a postmodern engagement with the deconstruction of conventional rules of image composition. For her, it was not about a conscious departure from the dark realism of artists such as Corinne Day or Jürgen Teller, rather Constantine‘s images are based on her own youthful experiences as a member of a movement which consisted of groups such as mods, rockers and skinheads.
EXHIBITION
Photography With Attitude
Elaine Constantine
From 06 November 2015 to 29 January 2016
Sunday Gallery
Zwinglistrasse 30
8004 Zurich
Switzerland
http://www.sunday.gallery
