Alison McCauley has a BA Hons in visual arts from the Winchester School of Art, a BA Hons in creative arts – photography, from the Open College of the Arts, UK and a postgraduate diploma in visual arts – painting, Haute école d'Art et de Design, Geneva. Her approach to the people and locations she photographs is instinctive, open-ended and subjective. She weaves her images together to create non-linear, intuitive narratives. Alison’s work often explores the idea of identity, belonging and memory and images are frequently infused with melancholy and feelings of restlessness and loss. Alison is especially interested in presenting her visual narratives in books that she makes by hand.
Copies of Alison's books are in the Tate Library and Archive, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Cannes Library. She is a member of UP Photographers and a selection of her work is represented by Millennium Images. Alison's work has been featured widely in print and online.
Alison is currently based in Geneva and her new book, Anywhere But Here was recently published by Photo Editions.
On episode 169, Alison discusses, among other things:
- How she found a publisher for Anywhere But Here
- Working on zines and limited edition books
- The feeling of restlessness and not belonging
- Living in Geneva
- Growing up in Malaysia
- Some of her unorthodox methods
- Her background in painting
- The physical pleasure of making books
- Her work at the Cannes film festival
- Her current project in the south of France, Shimmer
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“I kind of don’t want to get that beautiful feeling of being peaceful in a place and feeling great, because then I’d have no more impetus to keep searching and that’s what’s powering the work at the moment.”