Richard Ansett

Quotes & Articles

“Ansett’s work is mind blowing but not cosy at all. Just brilliant photography.” – Suzanne Moore

“Ansett’s photograph [of Grayson Perry] sums up Brexit in a single shot.” – Steve Anglesey, The New European (read full article)

“Totally transfixing..” – Janet Hardie, Senior Specialist Modern Art, Bonhams

“Certain areas and its peoples are often misrepresented and Ansett’s photography lends an authentic viewpoint and voice.” Jonathan Powell, Director Elysium Gallery

“Seeing Richard Ansett work his magic has been the highlight of this dark and scary year. He has captured some amazing images of love and joy against a backdrop where people are expected to have no hope and be written off.” – Charlotte Benstead, Creation Trust

“Its like art..” – Sir Grayson Perry

“disquieting and arresting.” – Brett Rogers, The Photographers Gallery

“Richard’s photography is extraordinarily moving, tackling a range of challenging subjects, particularly around the impact of devastating events on young people. His work is frequently both documentary and therapeutic, and an example of great photography to serve differing purposes.” – Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS, Royal Photographic Society Director of Education and Public Affairs

“a deep curiosity and a need to gain access and intimacy with others”. – Laura Geiser, Buzzfeed

“An extraordinary talent and capacity to convey his lived experience through photography.” – Clair Rees, curator /psychotherapist

“fascinating..” – Ben Beaumont Thomas / The Guardian

“Ansett’s archive (sic) is a testament to his belief that taking someone’s portrait is a selfish and occasionally exploitative act that should not be trusted as a truthful representation of a subject’s life.” – Stephen McClaren, Editor, Photographer;s Sketchbooks, Thames & Hudson (2015)

“Richard Ansett’s ‘The Doll’s House’ (sic) transforms communication itself.” – Karen Falconer /INDEPENDENT

“This exhibition intentionally distorts the concept of portraiture as Ansett’s subjects are often unidentifiable and not even present in his evocative and intriguing photographs. Arresting photographs from the provocative London- based artist…” – Time Out

An act of genius…he is the skeleton from which all the other meat hangs.”- Boris Mikhailov

“The theatrical narrator of all our thoughts and fantasy.”– Uncertain States

“Ansett achieved the level of expressiveness (sic) that can be compared with the works by Michelangelo Caravaggio. People in bandages and with casts make an astonishing impression with the combination of dignity and sculptural modeling of bodies. Children with autism turned out the best on his photos. Ansett managed to convey their secret – in his works they look like bearers of inner power that is inherent only to the mythical heroes. The general placement of photographs and the shaded atmosphere of the hall strengthen the connotation of Baroque paintings. With all the clearness of the form, it is really rather about faith, or even, about the beauty of faith, it doesn’t matter whether it’s faith in the higher power or your loved ones.” – Read full article by Dmytro Desiateryk, The Day, Donetsk – Kyiv

“There is a very subtle line between documentation and creating a new mythology.” Read full interview with Asia Bazdyrieva/ART Ukraine

“Richard Ansett tells the story of human beings’ inherent fragility. Ansett shows that while injuries and traumas are inflicted upon us through interaction with the outside world, healing can only come from within, as we emerge from denial and understand the power of our own agency.” –  Olena Chervonik/Curator Partly Cloudy

Interview with IZOLYATSIA, 2011

Richard Ansett, questions the notion of documentation being misconstrued or biased. In portraiture, is the point-of-view that of the subject or of the creator? – Lisa Slominski, Curator ‘The Bottom Line’, Tenderpixel Gallery

“Richard Ansett’s large Lambda print ‘Yawning, Screaming, Singing’ is an ambiguous document that is insolently provocative yet darkly reserved. There is a tension between the staged and the accidental, the momentary and perpetual. Ansett’s work is disarmingly simple and eloquently realised.” – Fay Nicolson, an Magazine 03.2011

Ansett’s photographs bring to mind the invisible, made visible  – like the vulnerable on the edge of society, to stop them disappearing altogether.”Indra Adnan

“For all its art-world froideur and its antiseptic, scientific gleam, Ansett’s photo has that kind of sympathy, that kind of humanity.” – Read Full Article Blake Gopnik, The Washington Post 12.2010

“Richard Ansett’s images do not flatter to deceive… humour offsets a gritty realism”

Diane Smyth, British Journal of Photography

“..sensitive and touching portraiture.” – Lee Swillingham

“Ansett’s portraits show the extraordinary in the ordinary and vice versa..” – Manfrd Zollner, FOTOmagazin, Germany

“Richard Ansett is without question one of the UK’s top contemporary photographers… His work (sic) is focused on exploring the limits we place in our minds on what goes beyond being socially acceptable, and what should perhaps just seem normal. ..They are stunning, shocking, and stark – but most of all, they are wonderful photographs.” – Jacob Jones, Le Cool Guide

“bold and beautiful with the power to shock yet there is a subtle message”  – Matt Grayson, London Informer

“Ansett’s work explodes the myth of documentary image making, calling into question the assumed complicity between photographer and subject. Ansett resturctures his environments using tools such as dislocation and unfamiliarity in order to shed light on narratives that would other wise remain hidden.” – Etan J Ilfeld,  Tenderpixel Gallery

About Ron & Roger – “Ansett’s Images make an extremely powerful archive of modern lives” –Caroline Smith, Review ArtRead full article

About ‘LESLIE CROWTHER … An Iconiclastic pantomime’ – “wonderfully cheesy and offbeat” – London Evening Standard

The UN of Photography

Interview with Stephen McLaren

Interview with Wake Up Screaming

Interview with HUNGER Magazine

Interview with Le Cool Guide

Interview with Fotoritim

Interview with AllBuyArt

Interview with 1st Angel