Paddy Summerfield, Oxford Pictures 35
This substantial retrospective of the work of photographer Paddy Summerfield shows the stages of his creative evolution through comprehensive installations inspired by his five major publications as well as other significant bodies of work.
Paddy Summerfield (1947–2024) was a photographer who developed a new psychological vision of photography, turning the camera on the innermost workings of the human mind and heart.
Summerfield's early work, published in Album and Creative Camera in the 1970s, attracted favourable attention but he withdrew from the threat of success in London, after the onset of depressive illness. He remained in Oxford, working endlessly, exhibiting locally. Later, his five critically acclaimed publications depicted Summerfield’s most intense and enduring photographic obsessions: desire and alienation.
This substantial retrospective of the photographer’s work shows the stages of Summerfield’s creative evolution through comprehensive installations inspired by his five major publications as well as other significant bodies of work.
The exhibition also offers a glimpse of both the physicality and mastery of Summerfield's unique and idiosyncratic relationship with the craft of photographic print making.
A limited edition catalogue published to accompany the retrospective is available from Flow Photographic.
Paddy Summerfield
The Camera Helps
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Broad Street,
Oxford,
OX1 3BG
11 October–30 November
Monday–Saturday 10am–5pm
Sunday 11am-4pm
Curators Tour
Saturday 25 October, 4pm - Patricia Baker-Cassidy & Alex Schneideman in Conversation
