Simon Norfolk...a little less crap
Biography: Photographer Simon Norfolk was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1963. After attending the Universities of Oxford and Bristol, he studied documentary photography at Newport in Gwent. He gained experience in photojournalism by working for the far-left press during the early 1990's, in particular as staff photographer for Living Marxism from 1990-1994. As a photojournalist, he did extensive work on fascism and the far-right; anti-Racism issues; the Poll-Tax and Northern Ireland. He also covered Eastern Europe at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and protests against the Gulf War.
Norfolk gave up photojournalism in the mid-nineties and began work on his book, For Most Of It I Have No Words: Genocide, Landscape, Memory, about the landscapes and remains of the places where mass murders had taken place in the 20th century. The project took four years to complete and was published as a book in 1998. An exhibition of the work has toured throughout the UK and Europe and is presently touring in America. He is currently working on a project about the genocide of the Indians of North America.
He once said,
"I am against all those who through their greed, stupidity, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, blindness, ignorance or simple 'couldn't-give-a-tossness' are working towards, or are allowing, the world to become more crap."
Simon Norfolk would like to leave the world with a bit less crap than it had when he came into it. He believes that the aforementioned people will win in the end, but he sees it as his job to cause losses to their ranks, bewilderment to their ideology and sourness to the taste of their victory.
Shouldn't we all strive to leave this world with a little less crap than when we came into it? Shouldn't we see to it that our little corner of the world is cleared-off and swept clean of "greed, stupidity, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, blindness, ignorance, and apathy" even if it is just in ourselves? Should we not strive to leave a mark, and make a difference, and clean-up our world a little?
Norfolk gave up photojournalism in the mid-nineties and began work on his book, For Most Of It I Have No Words: Genocide, Landscape, Memory, about the landscapes and remains of the places where mass murders had taken place in the 20th century. The project took four years to complete and was published as a book in 1998. An exhibition of the work has toured throughout the UK and Europe and is presently touring in America. He is currently working on a project about the genocide of the Indians of North America.
He once said,
"I am against all those who through their greed, stupidity, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, blindness, ignorance or simple 'couldn't-give-a-tossness' are working towards, or are allowing, the world to become more crap."
Simon Norfolk would like to leave the world with a bit less crap than it had when he came into it. He believes that the aforementioned people will win in the end, but he sees it as his job to cause losses to their ranks, bewilderment to their ideology and sourness to the taste of their victory.
Shouldn't we all strive to leave this world with a little less crap than when we came into it? Shouldn't we see to it that our little corner of the world is cleared-off and swept clean of "greed, stupidity, arrogance, narrow-mindedness, blindness, ignorance, and apathy" even if it is just in ourselves? Should we not strive to leave a mark, and make a difference, and clean-up our world a little?
