• 15 May 2018
  • 12:30 – 2:00 pm
  • Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre

Fellows Lunch: Curator Series event by Dr Pippa Oldfield, Head of Programmes at Impressions Gallery, Bradford.

How might women photograph war? With the support of a Paul Mellon Curatorial Award, Dr Pippa Oldfield investigated the ways in which women have responded to the First World War, both during the conflict and a hundred years later. She will share her research that led to the national touring exhibition No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War, which opened at Impressions Gallery, Bradford, in 2017 and is currently on view at Bristol Cathedral from 7 April to 1 July 2018. Pippa will discuss pioneering women who made images at or near the frontlines, including Mairi Chisholm, a First Aid nurse and ambulance driver in Flanders, Belgium; Florence Farmborough, a nurse with the Russian Red Cross; and Olive Edis, the UK’s first officially commissioned woman photographer sent to a war zone. She will also reflect on contemporary responses by artists Alison Baskerville, Dawn Cole, and Chloe Dewe Mathews, and consider how assumptions of gender have shaped the practice of war photography.

Exhibition credit:
No Man’s Land is a co-production by Impressions Gallery, Bradford; The Turnpike, Leigh; Bristol Cathedral; and Bishop Auckland Town Hall, County Durham, supported by National Lottery through Arts Council England Strategic Touring; Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; and Peter E. Palmquist Fund for Historical Photographic Research. Historical images are kindly provided by National Library of Scotland; Imperial War Museums; Special Collections, University of Leeds; Cromer Museum (Norfolk Museums Service).

The Fellows Lunch: Curator Series is a set of four free lunchtime research talks given by recipients of Paul Mellon Centre Curator Research Grants. All are welcome but please book a ticket in advance.

Press image caption:
Mairi Chisholm, Elsie Knocker, Pervyse, Flanders, 1915, © National Library of Scotland

About the speaker

  • Head and shoulders photographic portrait of Pippa Oldfield

    Pippa Oldfield is Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery, Bradford, a charity that helps people understand the world through photography. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University and a member of the research group CVAC (Centre for Visual Arts and Culture). She has curated numerous national touring exhibitions on the theme of war, and has a particular interest in the ways in which gender and photography intersect. She is the author of Bringing the War Home (Impressions Gallery, 2010) and is currently working on the monograph Photography and War for Reaktion.