My photography is driven by and explores the ‘documentary impulse’ – the desire to observe, record, make sense of, and perhaps even to change, our everyday realities. From street photography to portraiture and through a number of personal projects, my work aims to reveal connections between the ordinary and extraordinary and to celebrate the lived experience of those whose stories are often overlooked in a image saturated environment.

Formerly an academic, I spent twenty years teaching and researching in universities on issues of conflict, peace and change. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Geographical Society and a member of Luneside Artists Studios.

I was the recipient of the 2020 Amateur Photographer Magazine and MPB Inaugural ‘Rising Star’ Bursary for my work documenting change in the high Arctic.

In the documentary impulse, two species of ‘fact’ exist side by side: one is coolly objective and the other is fraught, diverse and emotive; one figurative, the other abstract; one prosaic, the other poetic; one factual, the other romantic.

~ Stuart Franklin