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John Blakemore

Born 1936, Coventry.

Blakemore took up photography during his National Service with the RAF in Libya in the 1950s. After this he worked as a free-lance photographer and though self-taught, quickly came to be recognised as an outstanding and versatile practitioner in a variety of forms of photography – landscape, documentary, portraiture and still life. His ethereal and atmospheric landscapes seek to suggest the idea of energy in the natural world, while his rich and elegant still life studies are revelatory in their capture of intense detail.

Blakemore has been an inspirational teacher, not only through the five photography books he has published but also through his teaching, mainly at the University of Derby from 1970 to 2001 where he was responsible for the Diploma in Creative Photography and where subsequently he has been appointed Emeritus Professor of Photography.

He has received a number of honours and awards including an Arts Council Award, a British Council Travelling Scholarship, the Fox Talbot Award for Photography and an Honorary Fellowship of the Photographic Society. His work has been exhibited extensively in the UK as well as at international venues as diverse as Vietnam, China, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

Tulips - Mutations
Tulips - The Generations No 4
Tulips - Mutations No 3