
12star Gallery 30th Nov – 30th Dec 2011
10am-6pm, Monday to Friday
Europe House
32 Smith Square
London SW1P 3EU
Documentary photographer Tom Martin works primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tom undertakes commissions for organisations including the EU and UN; as a photojournalist he files pictures for Associated Press and the European Press Photographers’ Association; he also provides images for tourism marketing and travel magazines, these images are not mutually exclusive.
After training as a fine artist at Central Saint Martins Tom moved to Rwanda, initially to document sites of genocide. Post-holocaust its people evidently bear deep and sustained scars yet Rwanda as a country is beginning to recover. Tom relates to people’s stories; through his eyes we share in the evidence of that recovery through the representation of the common human struggle to be heard.
In 2006 Tom was imprisoned in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Brief as it was, during this incarceration he experienced some of the extreme fear and isolation felt by both prisoners and the general population of the DRC.
Since this incident Tom has been driven to document these dark places, some of the most appalling environments known to humankind. Yet he’s as driven to document the beauty and vitality of this diverse continent.
This exhibition brings together images from Tom’s EU work, documenting a diverse range of projects in east and central Africa. These images are document to the crucial human stories behind the momentous transformation of developing countries. Through the eye of a fine artist he re-presents images of state institutions and the people that inhabit them – prisoners, police, judges, soldiers with images of the rural population – people like us caught up in a rapidly changing society.
The EU is a major donor for development in the region, from building roads to good governance.
For more info visit: http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/information/exhibitions/index_en.htm