T Magazine: One Photographer’s Personal (and Visual) Journey

Aug 25

Aug 25 T Magazine: One Photographer’s Personal (and Visual) Journey

Exhibitions: Jamie Hawkesworth in Amsterdam

The 30-year-old Suffolk-born photographer Jamie Hawkesworth started by studying forensic science at Preston University in Lancashire, in England’s northwest. But it was only when he picked up a camera to document reconstructions of crime scenes for the course that he realized his true passion. “It was like a switch went off,” he says. “That’s when I realized there was so much potential in photography. I quickly fell in love with taking pictures.”

While feted as one of the most talented fashion photographers of his generation (he has shot campaigns for J.W. Anderson and Loewe, and editorials for Vogue and Fantastic Man, in addition to T), Hawkesworth’s work remains grounded in the traditions of British documentary photography. He applies a sense of empathy and playfulness to his images — and aims to keep his documentary and fashion work as continuous as possible. “I would never want to see them as different,” he says. “I treat things in the same way — there’s no distinction between me shooting nude ladies on a beach to crossing Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway or photographing my girlfriend. It’s just one way of seeing.”

In September, “Landscape With Tree,” his biggest solo exhibition to date, will open at the Huis Marseille photography museum in Amsterdam. While he was initially approached by Nanda van den Berg, the museum’s curator, for a group show, Hawkesworth fell in love with the space and convinced her to give him the museum’s entire 14 rooms (spread out over two 17th-century canal houses) for the exhibition. “It felt like a great opportunity to dive deeper into this idea of going on a journey where each room could be its own environment.”

This extensive exhibition will be an immersive experience of his work. Last year, his comprehensive solo show at Red Hook Labs in New York consisted of 51 photographs. But at the center of “Landscape With Tree,” a single room will hold 140 photographs from “Preston Bus Station.” They are the culmination of the three years that Hawkesworth spent photographing the commuters in a massive transportation hub in Lancashire. “It helped inform my sensibility as a photographer,” he says of the project. “It informed how I understand light, how I approach people. It’s at the heart of the way I see things.”

He doesn’t see the exhibition as a retrospective, but in curating the images for the show, Hawkesworth says he was struck by how his sensibilities have evolved over the last decade. “I never know why something catches my eye — it’s just a natural response to it,” he says. “There is one point in the show where you move from Preston to Antarctica — two very extreme places. In that sense that’s how it’s been over the last 10 years where I’ve gone from Preston to all across the world.”

Travis Blandford and Harriet Devlin like to garden. Both natural green thumbs, their rambling Seddon garden is packed with a bountiful veggie patch, lush foliage and a smorgasbord of plants that they have gathered and grown over the years. Besides spending a lot of time in the green paradise they have created together, Travis and Harriet are also the makers of Grafa, a smart new range of copper gardening tools.

The name Grafa has Nordic roots, and means to dig. The range was born out of Travis’s interest in natural sciences, and his desires to experiment creatively outside of his day job as a machinist. ‘I did a Permaculture certificate a few years ago, and became quite interested in food production. I also did a bit of woofing on farms as well,’ he says.