Wilson, Rhonda

Rhonda Wilson, Birmingham, Great Britain

Rhonda Wilson was the Creative Director of Rhubarb.

Beginning life as a magazine journalist - simultaneously a music writer and agony auntie - she moved into graphics and photography for a second incarnation and was an established image maker in the 80's - making two highly successful campaigns around women and low pay / homelessness, which marked the influence of Thatcher's advertising culture and raised issues around representation of people already marginalised by their place in society. In 1989 she had a retrospective at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, and was a Director of Ten.8 photographic magazine - dedicated to issue based debate around the photographic image.

Travelscapes

There is something very freeing about the fact that no one thinks of meas a photographer. they see me as the director of rhubarb. someone whois pivotal in making their own photographs visible in a growing worldmarket. so my photography is almost like a secret, sometimes a secreteven to me... last year, in 2006, i was travelling most months, using myfine pix camera as a notebook. i remember very vividly the moment i made'rain in the estuary'. i had flown into cork from birmingham, settledmy suitcase in the hotel and walked to the station. by then the wind wasbig, and as the train set off towards the estuary, it was buffetted fromside to side by the force of the gale. i was desperate to see the sea, butas the hedges became thinner and the estuary should have been visible,the water which filled my vision was not from the sea, but from the rain.and then i looked again and realised that this was suddenly beautiful -the window protecting me from the landscape made now of waters, onefrom the sky and one from the bottom of the earth. there is somethingtender in this image, something which i find overwhelming when i lookat it, something which says to me that i was truly looking at what the world was doing on that day.

Roses

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