About AG
About Adrian Gatie
Influenced by the photo-graphs of Helen Levitt, Lisette Model and Andre Kertesz, Adrian Gatie began to photograph in the streets of Manchester in the late 1970s. Some of his photographs
of Moss Side and Salford were published in Manchester newspapers in
1985. Shortly afterwards he was contacted by the Documentary Photography Archive via Peter Turner at Creative Camera magazine, resulting in several notable projects.
Around 100 of Adrian Gatie's documentary photographs from this period are held in the DPA’s permanent collection within the National Archives.
1987 saw Gatie’s first exhibition, In Penumbria, seventy-five photographs of the downside of northern urban life. This was followed later in the year by a book of the same name, which has been out of print for some years and is now a collectors’ item.
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Whilst visiting London in 1987, looking for background information on British photographers working in the Thatcher years, Susan Kismaric, curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), bought a copy of In Penumbria and sent a message to Adrian Gatie, saying that he should send one to Robert Frank.
Robert Frank said of the book’s sombre pictures “Your photographs show the pain and sadness of the living in your part of the world”.
Robert became involved with the editing and formatting of later collections of Gatie’s work and Adrian has often spoken of his debt to Robert Frank for his encouragement and for his guidance on image selection and sequencing.
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Following the 1987-88
In Penumbria
touring exhibition, came Nexus (1989), a series commissioned initially as an extension to In Penumbria
and largely sequenced by Robert Frank.
Soon afterwards was
An Adjustment of Expectations
(1990-91). This was a
personal project with multiple image photo-metaphors rela-ting to then recent turnings in Gatie’s life, juxtaposed with some documentary images taken alongside the
In Penumbria
and Nexus
(1989) works. Beach Bodies
(1993) followed, then Nexus 2
(1995), Separated Dreams
(1996) and Out There
(1999).
In the photographic press, Adrian Gatie has been referred to as "a
stalwart of docu-mentary photography"
and
as "one of the finest street photographers in the country".
His working methods have been described variously as those of "a
detached observer of everyday happenings"
and "like a ghost in the machinery of life", as well as being "masterly in the techniques of invisible presence".
In 1988 Adrian moved to the east coast. He continued to work on documentary projects and in 1990, as a result of working on a commissioned book project on northern theatre, he became heavily involved in theatrical production photography. His time is now split between theatre jobs, commissioned documentary projects and some corporate work, as well as the production of images for his prints agent and the licensing of his 1990-2008 theatre photographs.
The playwright John Godber has spoken of wishing that he could reproduce Gatie’s street
photographs on stage and that he has Adrian to thank for reminding him that first there is real life, then there is Art.
In 2008 Dean Clough Galleries suggested a reprise of Adrian Gatie’s early black and white street photographs. It was decided to add some of his more recent colour work and this became Return to Penumbria, which showed for five months in 2009, before moving to Scarborough Art Gallery in 2010.
Manchester Art Gallery exhibited photographs from
In Penumbria throughout the whole of 2011.
Gatie is currently working on a long-term project with support from Salford City Council, searching out and revisiting travelling families that he had previously
photographed in the early 1980s. This new work,
The Looking for Michael, began in 2010 after staff from Salford Council discovered Adrian’s original 1980s photographs of northern travelling families in the National Archives.
Anna Cazale - January 2013
NB, regarding Adrian's work on The Looking for Michael, this was paused in late 2017 to be resumed in late 2020. In January 2018, he began work on In These Places, a personal project that he had been talking about putting together for the last five years.
Mitch Clark - August 2020
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My photographs have always been about people. In the main (unless they are part of a commissioned project) they are of people I see fleetingly but know nothing about. I am
interested in them because
I know so little about them. To photograph them is to touch the fringes of the lives of strangers.
I get as close as I can, quickly. Sometimes I wait a moment, more often I don’t. I photograph them once and move on…no conversation… no contact… that’s my rule, rarely broken. Sometimes there is the friction of eye contact… I like that…a terse acknowledgement of the single momentary link between us. I still move on. If the photograph is good enough, if the moment is right, I’ve got them and I know them forever…often not as the people they are, but as inhabitants of my photographs.
Things happen around us at such a fast pace… and they don’t come back to happen
again just for us…you have to be ready always…the instant we take a photograph its
elements melt away into other existences, and the captured image becomes its own vanished past.
Occasionally there are photographs with no people in them…but their trace is always there.
adrian gatie