Josephine Pryde (1967 – )

Josephine Pryde (born Alnwick; 1967) studied at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of Arts London and Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London. Pryde is known primarily for her work with photography, though she often presents work with sculptural elements. Pryde’s work plays with different photographic conventions, for example fashion or advertising photography, to create high resolution, glossy images. 

The pictures of the series This Time Last Year were taken at a late night shopping event in London in autumn 2011 and presented exactly one year later in the exhibition Night Out at the Simon Lee Gallery, located in the same area as the late night shops. Aluminium tubes penetrate the pictures. The description of the medium as “photograph on aluminium” becomes “aluminium on photograph on aluminium”, bringing the flat, billboard like images into three-dimensions.

This Time Last Year depicts glamourous subjects, their manicured hands holding smart phones on which they are recording their experience, referencing the ubiquity of the smart phone in mediating our experiences. The glossy surface of the images and the lacquered nails and mirror-shine heels they depict invoke ideas of touch and further refer back to touch screen technologies.