Mark Neville: Fancy Pictures

British artist Mark Neville works at the intersection of art and documentary, investigating the social function of photography. He makes lens-based works which have been realised and disseminated in a large array of contexts, as both still and moving image pieces, slideshows, films, and giveaway books. His work has consistently looked to subvert the traditional role of social documentary practice, seeking to find new ways to empower the position of its subject over that of the author. Often working with closely knit communities, in a collaborative process intended to be of direct, practical benefit to the subject, his photographic projects to date have frequently made the towns he portrays the primary audience for the work. Points of reference for his work might include the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, or the art works of Martha Rosler, John Berger, or Hans Haacke.

In 'The Port Glasgow Book Project', 2004, for example, Neville made a coffee table book of his own social documentary images of the working class town, delivered exclusively to each of the eight thousand houses in the Port by the local boys football team. The book is not available anywhere else, commercially, by mail order, or otherwise. Neville's concept was to undermine the framework of exploitation inherent in the way these types of images are normally disseminated. In 2012 The New York Times Magazine commissioned Neville to make the critically acclaimed photo essay 'Here is London', which examined wealth inequality in the capital, and which they subsequently nominated for The Pulitzer Prize. This Winter Steidl publish a major monograph on artist Mark Neville's socially engaged photographic and film projects from the past ten years.

In 2011 Neville spent three months working on the front line in Helmand, Afghanistan, with 16 Air Assault Brigade as an official war artist. The films and photographs he made there featured in a major solo show at The Imperial War Museum London in the Summer of 2014. More recently his war experience has resulted in The Battle Against Stigma Book Project, a collaboration between the artist and Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes, one of the UK's leading experts in the field of veteran mental health. The overall aim of the project is to challenge the stigma of mental health problems in the military and to encourage attitude change in order to facilitate help seeking at an early stage, without people being stigmatised. The Battle Against Stigma book, which Neville sent out free to veteran mental health organisations and experts throughout the UK, is divided into two-volumes. The first volume is the re-telling of Neville's own personal experience when he was sent out to Helmand in 2011 as an official war artist. Neville combines his text with photographs he took of troops both in Helmand and back in the UK as a means to give some insight into the issue of adjustment disorder which he found he had fallen victim to on his return from the war zone. The second volume is made-up of the written testimonies about PTSD and adjustment disorder from serving and ex-serving soldiers. Unfortunately, the first 500 copies of this book were seized at customs by UK Border Force, and have yet to be released. The second consignment of 1,000 copies entered the UK via a different route, and thus escaped seizure, and arrived safely at Neville's studio. Throughout 2015 Neville personally disseminated the remaining 1,000 copies free to prison libraries, probation services, homeless shelters, Defence Mental Health Services and veteran mental health charities.