Biography
James Corbett is a documentary photographer, photojournalist and Higher Education lecturer and Course Lead for Creative Arts whose practice spans more than three decades, which has taken him from the catwalks of London fashion week to the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan.
He has contributed to editorial and commercial clients, including the Times, the Telegraph newspaper and magazine, the Observer Life Magazine, Elle Decoration, Landscape magazine, International Crisis Group, Macmillan and Christian Aid.
His teaching and research are informed by his continuing photographic practice and encourages students to critically engage with photography as both a creative discipline and a theoretical investigation.
James’s current research interests include archives, memory, visual culture and the role of photography in preserving contemporary social history.
Practice Statement
The meaning of a photograph is never fixed. Images made to describe the present often acquire new significance as time passes, becoming records of people, places and events that can be understood differently by future audiences. It is this changing relationship between image, memory and history that underpins my work.
Over the past three decades I have photographed conflict, communities, public figures, protest movements and everyday life. Although these projects were made independently and for different purposes, I increasingly understand them as parts of an evolving archive rather than discrete bodies of work. Together they form a visual record of social, political, cultural and environmental change.
My work is driven by an interest in how images continue to live beyond the moment of their making. Whether produced on editorial assignment or through long-term documentary enquiry, each photograph contributes to an ongoing conversation about memory, representation and the ways contemporary life is preserved for the future.