Hannah Starkey (1977, Belfast, England) is an English photographer who produces posed photos of women in solitary environments.

Biography

Born in Belfast, Starkey studied photography and film at the Napier University, Edinburgh, (1992-1995) and photography at the Royal College of Art, London (1996-97). He currently lives and works in London.

Her most recent images have an almost theatrical nature, often representing women in stages, for example, with a Coca Cola in a bar or inside a public bathroom. She describes her work as “investigation of everyday experiences and observations of the inner life of the city from a female perspective”.

Using actors within carefully considered scenarios, Hannah Starkey’s photographs reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the stylization of a film. The images of Starkey represent women engaged in regular routines such as lazing on the street, sitting in cafes or go shopping passively.

Starkey captures these generic or “intermediate” moments of everyday life with a sense of relational detachment. Your still images work as uncomfortable “pauses”; where the banality of existence freezes at the point of crisis, creating reflective instances of inner contemplation, isolation and conflicting emotion.

Through the staging, Starkey’s imagery images evoke suggestive narratives through their appropriation of cultural templates: questions of class, race, gender and identity are implicit through the physical appearance of their models or places.

Adopting the filmography devices, Starkey’s images intensify with a widespread voyeuristic intrusion, framing intimate moments for consumption without complexes. Starkey often uses composition to enhance this sense of personal and emotional disconnection, with arrangements of solitary figures separated from a group, or segregated with metaphorical physical divisions such as tables or mirrors.

She often titles his work as Untitled, followed by a generalized date of creation, his photographs are parallel to the interconnected vagueness of memory, remembering suggestions of events and emotions without location or fixed context. His work presents a platform where fiction and reality are blurred, illustrating the gap between personal fragility and social construction, and fusing the experiences of strangers with ours.

Exhibitions

2011: Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
2011: “Hannah Starkey: Twenty-Nine Pictures”, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
2010: Maureen Paley, London
2010: Forum für Fotografie, Cologne
2009: Galleria Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz, Switzerland