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Born in 1961 and completing her degree in Audio Visual studies at The Surrey Institute, Farnham in 1986, Anna Fox began her career as a documentary photographer. Influenced by the British documentary tradition and the USA’s ‘New Colourists’, she chronicled new town life in Basingstoke (locally known as ‘Doughnut City’) and went on to publish the monograph Work Stations (1988), a study of London Office life in Thatcher’s Britain. These works were exhibited extensively as far a field as Brazil and Estonia and in Through the Looking Glass, at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1989 curated by David Mellor and Ian Jeffrey, establishing Anna as a significant figure within the field of new colour documentary.

In later projects, made in the 1990’s, In Pursuit (1990), The Village (1991-1992 Cross Channel Photographic Mission commission), Friendly Fire (1992) and Zwarte Piet (the Netherlands 1994-1999) Anna created a new direction inventing innovative approaches and raising questions regarding the problems of documentary practice. These projects were exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions including The Photographers Gallery, London and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.

By early 2000 Anna produced two autobiographical works: Cockroach Diary and My Mothers Cupboards and my Father’s Words which completely turned on its head the notion of the documentary photographer as outsider. These new works investigated the personal and difficult world of domestic households and relationships bringing together a mix of image and text in two miniature book works. Later in 2003 the series Made in Europe questioned further the power relation between subject and photographer by handing over power to the subject in whork that portrayed a vision of contemporary Europe through the eyes and voices of teenagers. 

The projects Country Girls (1996-2001) and Pictures of Linda (1983-ongoing) introduced a collaborative element to Anna’s practice: by working in partnership with the singer/songwriters Alison Goldfrapp and Linda Lunus the relationship between subject and photographer was being explored from a new perspective.

Anna was shortlisted for the 2010 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize and the 2012 Pilar Citoler Prize. Her later projects, Resort 1 and Resort 2 are published by Shilt, Amsterdam, Loisirs is published by Diaphane and an new book, BLINK, will be published by Central St Martins.

Anna is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham and leads the Fast Forward Women in Photography research project.

On episode 166, Anna discusses, among other things:

• Reflections on the past 18 months
• What she’s been working on during that period
• Having a lot of ideas
• Moving away from a ‘project based mentaility’
• The influences of people who taught her: Graham, Parr and Knorr
• The exploration of the every day
• 41 Hewitt Road and the transition to focusing on domestic photography
• Her use of text in conjunction with images
• Moving to and working in an English country village
• Her project Zwarte Piet
• My Mothers Cupboards and my Father’s Words
• Fast Forward Women in Photography

Referenced:

• John Dillwyn
• Mary Dillwyn
• Paul Reas
• Paul Searight
• Anthony Haughey
• Tessa Bunney
• David Moore
• Paul Graham
• Martin Parr
• Karen Knor
• Val Williams
• Jane Austen
• Gilbert White
• William Cobbett
• Raymond Williams
• Mieke Bal
• Mark Sealy - Autograph
• Naomi Rosenblaum

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“It’s the discovery of the personal voice, I suppose, and the personal stories that you want to tell, that you can’t articulate. That’s why someone becomes a photographer or a filmmaker… you use photography because you can’t speak it.”