Mark Neville
Mark Neville (born 1966) is a British social documentary photographer. Life and work. Neville lives and works in London. He studied Fine Arts at Reading University, Berkshire (B.A.), Goldsmiths' College in London (M.A.) and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands. As an artist he is known for working at the interface of art and documentary utilizing photography and films to capture the unique face of working communities. Neville is best known for his "Port Glasgow Book Project", after he spent a year as artist in residence in Port Glasgow in 2004 portraying the town's hardship of Scotland's  post-industrial decline in a photographic book which was distributed as a free gift to all members of the community. He has worked on commissioned projects by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh ("Braddock/Sewickley", 2012) and Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute ("Fancy Pictures", 2008). His work "Deeds Not Words", which addresses the Corby community involved in the toxic waste disposal court case, exhibited in 2013 at The Photographers' Gallery in London. Neville created a body of work based on a three-month residency with the British Army in the Afghan province of Helmand as the UK's  official war artist in 2011. Part of "The Helmand Work" showed at London's Imperial War Museum's Contemporary Art Gallery during its relaunch in Summer 2014. Neville suffered from and was eventually treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon his return from Helmand, and this experience also resulted in "The Battle Against Stigma Book Project". A selection of emails and prints from the book was included in the touring group exhibition "With Different Eyes – The Portrait in Contemporary Photography" which opened at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur and Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2016, and in Neville’s solo show  Battle Against Stigma at QUAD in Derby, England in 2018. In 2012 "The New York Times Magazine" commissioned Neville to make the photo essay "Here is London", which examined wealth inequality in the capital, and which they subsequently nominated for The Pulitzer Prize. In 2016 Steidl published the first commercially available book on Neville's activist book practice. "Fancy Pictures" includes work from six of Neville's projects with an interview between David Campany and Neville and was shortlisted for the 2017 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards PhotoBook of the Year. Neville’s 2017 project "Child’s Play" continued  his investigation into mental health issues by examining the importance of play in personal development. Neville’s project made a link between the closures of adventure playgrounds in Britain’s urban areas and a drastic rise in cases of depression and anxiety among young people and children. Begun June 2016 on the day Britain voted to leave the European Union Neville's "Parade" book project was commissioned by GwinZegal Centre of Art, in the town of Guingamp, France. Disgusted by the outcome of the Brexit vote, Neville decided to examine what community meant in Brittany (‘Little Britain’), as a mirror  to his own native country.