Paul Hill was born in Ludlow in Shropshire. He trained as a reporter and worked on local newspapers for six years, gradually adding photography to his journalistic skills. In 1970 he started teaching photography, becoming Principal Lecturer in Creative Photography at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham; he later became Professor of Photography at DeMonfort University in Leicester. Hill founded the Photographers’ Place, a centre for photographic studies in Derbyshire, was the first Chairperson of the Contemporary Group with the Royal Photographic Society, and in 1994 was awarded an MBE for his services to photography. His work in the British Council Collection reflects the direction of his photographic career - moving from reportage and commentary to an increased interest in the photograph as an expressive object. Notwithstanding this shift in emphasis, Hill’s work exemplified a consistent interest in the photograph as an artefact, a ‘stilled rectangle or square of space’ within which forms may be disposed. For a time he sought the partial view, the unconventional angle, which provoked the viewer to complete the fractured image and so acknowledge the role of the photographic frame. The landscape studies in the Collection present a more 'natural' view of his subject matter, and confirm Hill’s interest in the reading of photographs as a kind of detection from given evidence - his pre-occupation with the objective nature of the photograph as a flat surface carrying deposits of tone from which can be interpreted the character and relationships of objects in the real world.

Photography as Medium, The British Council 1981

 

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