My name is Mark Crean and I am a photographer based in Oxfordshire. After some years in book publishing, I realised that photography was for me and I have never looked back. What draws my interest are liminal, edgeland places, the neglected or forgotten, the pushed out or left behind, particularly in England’s more rural areas. These are the places where the cracks appear in society’s settled view of itself, the places where the light gets in. Recent projects include "Common Land", on the traces of a rural rebellion in Oxfordshire against injustices that are still with us today, and "Silent City" on the eerie other world of Oxford city at night during the pandemic of 2020–21. I graduated with an MA in Photography from Falmouth University in 2021.
I am a member of The Long Exposure, a collective of international lens-based artists from my university cohort.
Recently, I was asked to say what photography means to me. This is how I tried to sum it up:
"Photography is therapeutic in my case. Immersing myself in a scene is a way of allowing my unconscious to tell me what I really feel, of how the myths and stories from my childhood and past colour everything I see. It’s a way of trying to be in a place rather than simply looking at it. And quite often what seems to emerge from the frame is a kind of numinous quality that’s more important than the details. I’d like to think this is the poetry of the everyday, and photography helps me to access it by encouraging me to slow down a bit and try to be curious about life. I’d feel lost without it."
If you wish to get in touch then please either use the contact form on this site or email me at the address below:
Email: mcrean@snowpetrel.net
Instagram: @markcreanphotography
Twitter: @Mark__Crean
Web: https://markcrean.myportfolio.com
Instagram: @markcreanphotography
Twitter: @Mark__Crean
Web: https://markcrean.myportfolio.com