Richard Sawdon Smith

photo credit: Chris Roberts
Professor of Fine Art & Photography

Richard Sawdon Smith is Professor of Fine Art & Photography at Norwich University of the Arts. His work is published and exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. He is regularly invited to speak about his work at other universities, international conferences as well as TV and radio programmes. He is on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the Journal of Photography & Culture, Patron of Norwich Film Festival and Trustee of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design. He is a member of the Visual AIDS Archive Project in NYC for whom he has curated and been selected for a number of their ‘virtual’ exhibitions. A former founding Board Member of bookRoom Press, previously on the Editorial Advisory Board of Mustard TV, and a winner of the National Portrait Gallery Photographic Portrait Award. He is Co-editor of Langford’s Basic Photography and The Book is Alive!

Richard’s main area of practice covers photographic self-portraiture but also expands into video and Virtual Reality work, that deals with issues in relation to the body and representations of health. By creating different personas to inhabit as the subject of the photographs, initially as The Damaged Narcissist then The Anatomical Man, his tattooed alter ego and recently The Unknowing…X, he creates a way of detaching himself from the self in the images to enable a dialogue about the work in the third person, their relationship to communities and institutions. All the time playing with issues of aging, gender, identity, sexuality, subjectivity, masculinity, and everything in between. Richard has worked with a number of other artists and photographers on collaborative projects in particular within the HIV/AIDS and Queer communities.

Works by Richard Sawdon Smith in the NUA Research Repository.

Richard Sawdon Smith NUA Staff Profile