Artist Profile
Claire studied photography and fashion communication at Central St Martins in London late 90s, early 2000s. First commissioned by the late Professor Louise Wilson to photograph backstage fashion collections of graduating designers, in what has now become her signature style in black and white film. Friendship with designers opened doors to designers’ studios in London and Paris, and her eyes to design in process, being more drawn to the working studio and backstage fashion show than the catwalk. Commissioned by Nadja Swarovski to continue photographing for leading visionary fashion designers including Alexander McQueen.
Besides photographing backstage fashion, a series of portraits and conversations focused on youth subcultures, created in London 2003 and video work in Paris 2005-6, developed a more participatory process. This became the foundation of her teaching and learning, leading BA and MA Fashion Communication courses at Central St Martins, University of the Arts and outreach work in local schools, in partnership with educational and art institutions such as Autograph Gallery, Space Studios, ACME and Royal Opera House.
Encountering Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas, during post graduate research at Royal College of Art, more concrete methods and methodologies established a photography where images are confronted within her own archive. The writing of the photograph through literary montage and its conflicts opening up new ways of attempting to see how a photograph can speak in its essay form.
Photography pushed to its limits, embracing traditional processes to embody by hand observational skills in life drawing (Royal Drawing School, London) and a thinking through images (Salzburg Summer Academy, Austria). Full scholarship at Hebrew University gives context to her most recent work on the state of Israel.
Destroying her past artwork including film negatives, some images have survived albeit in digital form, she has turned her hand once again to photography. Inspired light writing, Instagram in part, is rebuilding the wall as witness in testimony, the forgotten of history become the remembered of her story.
Le chambreclaire