Image: see artist’s website, below.
Ian Beesley was born in Bradford, 1954. After leaving school in 1972 he worked as a labourer in a textile mill, then in an engineering foundry, before working at the local sewage works, Esholt, as the ‘roadrunner’ in the railway gang.
At the sewage works in 1973, he bought his first camera and began to photograph his workmates, and with their encouragement applied for the Foundation Course in Art at Bradford Art College and was accepted in 1974. He told the local newspaper, ‘Telegraph & Argus’:
Four generations of my family have grafted in the foundries and mills of the North. After leaving school I worked in a mill, a foundry and sewage works. It was my fellow workers who encouraged me to find a profession and I found photography. I started photographing where I worked and who I worked with. I soon became aware of a ‘gap’ between the photographs of industry that were exhibited or published and what I saw and experienced as an industrial worker. (T&A, 23 Dec. 2016)
After leaving Bradford College, he continued his studies in photography at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art, where he graduated in 1977 with distinction in documentary and editorial photography. In 1978 he was awarded a Kodak Scholarship for Social Documentation and began recording the decline of industrial society and its impact on community.
Image: see artist’s website, below.
Ian’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in national collections both in the UK and overseas, including the National Media Museum, and the Industrial Museum, both in Bradford; the National Museum for Coal Mining at Wakefield; the Imperial War Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the Central Museum of Labour, Tampere, Finland, and the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, USA.
Image: see artist’s website, below
He is the author of 25 books featuring his work, including ‘The Drift’ (2011) and ‘T’Ales’ (2011). His photographs were recently included in a limited edition book by Incline Press: ‘The Days Out, The Weeks Away’ (2012), including the poetry of Ian McMillan, and in ‘Yorkshire Stridings’ (2016), published by Souvenir Press, also featuring poetry by Ian McMillan.
Ian’s publication ‘Claret and Amber in Black and White – Bradford City’s first season in the Premiership’ (2000) was voted the best football photography book of 2000 by ‘Four Four Two’ magazine.
In 1994 he was appointed Artist in Residence at Moor Psychiatric Hospital in Lancaster and worked on the unit specifically for the care of the extreme elderly, documenting their lives (see example below).
Image: see artist’s website, below.
He was also appointed as Artist in Residence for the ‘Born in Bradford’ longitudinal birth cohort health research project, which started in 2007, and in 2011 he was appointed Artist in Residence for a five-year study on the effects of ageing in Bristol. In 2012 he was made an Hon. Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and in 2019 was awarded an Hon. Doctorate by the University of Bradford for his contribution to art and culture in the city, as well as its social and economic development.
‘Image from Born in Bradford’ project, copyright: Ian Beesley
Artist’s website: http://www.ianbeesley.com/