Jermaine Francis
July 2024
Jermaine Francis’ residency at Light Work is supported by Autograph London, a partnership with Light Work that dates from 1996.
Jermaine Francis is a photographer living in London, UK. He works across the discourses of documentary, landscape, portraiture and moving image. He explores how we have historically negotiated space physically and psychologically through the prisms of race and class in their social and political manifestations.
He has exhibited his work at The Camden Arts Centre (London), Centre of British Photography (London), galeriepcp (Paris), Haus Wien Austria, International Centre of Photography (New York City), The National Portrait Gallery (London), Pembroke JCR Gallery (Oxford), and The Saatchi Gallery (London). He co-curated the group show, Notes on a Native Son, After Baldwin, with Emma Bowkett as part of the Peckham 24 Photo Festival in 2023.
Francis’ work has appeared in The Art of Protest: Political Art and Activism (2021), ICP’s Concerned Global Images for Global Crisis (2020), and Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph (2021). He has written for 1000 Words Photographic Magazine, Beauty Papers, and BoyBrotherFriend,. Francis has published two books, Something that was so Familiar becomes Distant (2020) and Rhythms from the Metroplex (2021), which appeared in the London exhibition titled Civilization.
He is currently associate lecturer at the Royal College Art, Central St. Martin’s School of Design, and visiting lecturer at London College of Communications.
Ben Gest
August 2005
Ben Gest’s work gives a new meaning to the expression “more than meets the eye.” His work is as contemplative and quiet, as it is restless and emotionally charged. Gest modestly describes his work as “narratives of personal and simple everyday activities.” But he goes through extensive steps to create these narratives from multiple separate photographs. The end results are large scale photographs that are alluring from a distance and unexpectedly detailed upon closer examination.
Since arriving at Light Work, he has rarely stepped away from his computer. The first images are now rolling off the Light Work inkjet printers. Each is the result of countless hours spent on compilating many different images to create these believable yet artificially created photographs. Gest considers these images “an outgrowth of his interest in photography’s potential to tell the story of human life while considering its ability to create objective truth.”
Ben Gest was born in Caldwell, NJ. He earned a BA from Rutgers University and an MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago. Gest has exhibited nationally and institutions such as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Gest currently works as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College, Chicago.
