Phil Hill
I am a photographic artist, based in the UK whose practice is concerned with how photography impacts on identity and its constructions through narrative interpretation.
I have an MA in photography from Falmouth University and focused research on exploring different forms of narrative with photography. For example, my project ‘Unreliable Narrator’ that considers the stories we tell each other, to ourselves, and how this is constructed using the personal and family archive. The work is currently being produced as a book that contains unique versions of the same photograph so no two readings can be the same. This work was shortlisted for Belfast Photo Festival and was selected for the Athens Photo Festival Photobook Exhibition.
In 2021, I delivered a paper to the international ‘Communities and Communication’ conference about locality and identity using photography and the journey story narrative and taking inspiration from a Robert Frost Poem. I am currently contributing a chapter on the relationship of photography to autobiographical memory based on my experience of a defaced family photograph, which will be published in 2023.
I split my time between academic pursuits, long form photographic projects, research, and teaching.
Day Zero – WIP
Day Zero is a work in progress started after the birth of my second child, Elliot.
On the 9th of March, 2022, we approached the coming of a new baby with all of the confidence of parents who have been there before. Once born, our world became inextricably small and quickly we realised that Elliot is his own person, with needs and challenges that are unique and wholly different to those of my daughter when she was new-born.
Day Zero will explore the experience of second children and also the importance of fathers taking extended leave from my own experience of bonding with a new baby and also giving time to my daughter through a reflective and experimental photographic series.
The photographs concentrate on small intricate details and ideas of time that are crucial to the development of string bonds and also the act of photographic processes and the relationship of all of us. Crucially, this time that we have at the start of my new-born baby’s life will only occur once, so I want to create a body of work that is reflective of the time that we are sharing.
