ABOUT CLAIRE FRENCH

Claire French was born in Yorkshire in 1973 and is now based in Manchester where she lives with her two children. She has recently completed her MfA in photography, at the Belfast School of Art, University of Ulster. 

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Initially studying English Literature at university, she went on to find her true creative passion in photography, whilst taking her enthusiasm for stories and narratives on the journey. She has also spent some time studying psychology, fuelling her fascination in people and how they think, interact, connect and navigate their way through life.  

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Her practice, and the work that grows out of it, always starts in a deeply personal space, fluidly and experimentally, whilst researching and immersing herself into her subject and often influenced  by literature and poetry. Her work is often, in its first instance, autobiographical and she tells intimate stories - but ones that have a universality to them, based on a shared collective memory, that allows others to talk about their own stories.

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She is a great believer in photography and art as a therapeutic practice – whether practitioner, collaborator or subject, and her work centres around time, relationships, personal histories, transitions and a repossession of one’s identity.