Karen Rangeley who graduated from BA (Hons) Photography in June this year has won the inaugural Redeye Digital Printing Bursary courtesy of Jack Lowe Studio. We caught up with Karen to ask her more about the bursary, her work and current projects…
How did you hear about the Bursary?
I’ve been a member of Redeye, which is a Photography Network based in Manchester, for the past couple of years and had seen the digital bursary advertised. At the time, I had just been successful in having some work promoted in a regional exhibition, ‘Ones to watch’ and was amazed at the detail that I was noticing in the A1 prints I’d produced. I therefore jumped at the chance to work alongside Jack Lowe, one of the country’s leading digital printers for professional photographers, with a view to producing larger exhibition prints, but also to gain some practical advice about the print process.
Can you describe your work and what inspires your projects?
The images that I entered for the bursary are from my final year degree project, Be= f(P,E), which is a documentary based photographic work set in a Yorkshire textile factory. I’m fascinated with the lives of people around me and my camera gives me an excuse to explore their worlds. Funnily enough, there are no people in this series of images, as I decided to photograph instead the work and social spaces of the employees and the traces they leave behind them.
What are you plans for the future and what are you currently working on?
Alongside the exhibition images, I also produced a photo book combining my images with selected snapshots taken by the factory workers. I’m just in the process of entering the book for the Royal Photographic Society’s first Photo book award. It would be great to be able to put together an exhibition with the digital bursary.
Other than that, I’m producing documentary style shoots for the College, for Leeds Community Foundation and other smaller charities. I’m also setting up as a limited company to operate my own photography business, so thats keeping me very busy! I’ve just attended the College’s one week Enterprise workshop, which was absolutely brilliant. I would recommend it to all students thinking about self-employment - it’s given me such invaluable advice and information to make running my own business a reality. Exciting times!
You can view more of Karen's work on her blog.
