Polly Tootal

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E: pollytootal@mac.com

M:+447766098814

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E: kate@togetherassociates.com

M: +447813792908

IG: @pollytootal

Close 2023 - PhMuseum Womens Photography Grant - 3rd Prize Recipient2019 - Premier Prix, Maison Blanche Award, Photo Marseille - Winner2019 - Voies Off Awards, Arles - Finalist2019 - LensCulture Street Photography Awards - Finalist2019 - Kuala Lumpur International Photography Awards - Finalist2019 - Espy Photography Award - Finalist2015 - Prix Du Public Vile D’Hyeres Photographie2010 - Association of Photographers Assistants Award, Landscape Series Winner PhMuseum - London BurningVostok Magazine - Climate Crisis IssueSuperstore WildernessPH Museum 2021 Top PicksSixty Six MagazineIcon MagazineCreative Review - Exposure, Gem FletcherGUP magazineMadame Figaro MagazineLes Recontres Philosophiques De MonacoAlvar MagazineLVMH MagazineExit MagazineArtsy Editorial 2022 - Real Utopias - Collective Hub, Photo Fringe, Brighton, UK2022 - CTY / Unknown Places - Intervalle Gallery - Polly Tootal & Antony Cairns, Paris, France2022 - L'OEIL QUI VOYAGE - Intervalle Gallery, Collective exhibition, Paris, France2021 - LONDONS - The Polycentric City, Mass Collective - London, UK2020 - Mass Collective - Virtual Exhibition URBAN IDENTITIES2019 - Le Festival De Photographie de Marseille, Prix Maison Blanche - Marseille, France
2019 - Rencontres De La Photographie de Marrakech, Morocco2018 - One Contemporary - Venice, Italy2017 - Kestle Barton & Arts Council England - Cornwall, UK2017 - Unseen Photo Fair - Amsterdam, Netherlands2016 - Fotofever - Paris, France2016 - Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam - Netherlands2016 - South Kiosk - London, UK2016 - Galerie Intervalle - Paris, France2015 - Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam - Netherlands2015 - Hyeres Photography Festival Villa Noailes - France2014 - Soffia Gallery, Bulgarian Embassy, London – group exhibition2011 - Higher Pitch, London – group exhibition2010 - Four Corners, London – group Exhibition2009 - Southbank Centre & Hayward Touring Exhibition, Burr Projects, Bridport Dorset, UK

Essay by Matthew Parker

Polly Tootal

Tootal’s photography has emerged out of a continual exploration of the possibilities of space between a variety of extremes; theatre/reality, the contemporary world mirroring history, transience/permanence, the bizarre in the banal.  Tootal’s ongoing topographic project Somewhere In England began in 2010 and is an exploration of undisclosed, anonymous landscapes in the U.K. Shooting mainly at dawn or twilight, these public places devoid of people appear otherworldly. Within the images she attempts to present a cultural critique on contemporary social issues whilst highlighting the idiosyncrasies of public space and illuminating the nondescript landscape in these large-scale works. Concerned with how contemporary geopolitics restrict and displace different societal groups due to poverty and injustice - her work focuses on liminal zones, the outskirts of cities where urban and infrastructure meet, highlighting the chaos and control that power forces upon populations and the environment.  

Polly Tootal has lived and worked in London since graduating from Editorial Photography at the University of Brighton. Her landscape studies have been awarded the Prix Du Public Vile D’Heres Photographie 2015 and The Association of Photographers Award – Landscape Series 2010. She has been commissioned to depict the connections between people and place for clients such as Airbnb, Ink Global, and Air France, and fashion and lifestyle brands LVMH, Monocle Magazine and Madame Figaro magazine. Tootal presents regularly in solo exhibitions, group shows, and at art fairs throughout Britain, Europe, and North America. Notably, she exhibited at the Palazzo Rialto as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014. Prints of her work are held in private collections in the USA, Europe, and the UK.

'Polly brings a sense of mystery and wonder into all areas of her work. Her graphic compositions emphasise the almighty industrialisation of our world, while her quiet portraits remind us of our delicate and vulnerable humanity. This interesting dichotomy is a welcome new visual voice in the industry.' Gem Fletcher. 

ARTICLES

 Vostok Magazine - Climate Crisis Issue -  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz2p9tgJhb-/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/apr/14/polly-tootal-unknown-places-british-landscapes

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/exposure-polly-tootal/

https://www.life-framer.com/polly-tootal/

https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/unknown-places-photographer-polly-tootal-imagines-britain-without-any-people/

https://phmuseum.com/ptootal/story/the-hands-that-built-this-city-5be6914efd

https://www.instituteartist.com/filter/dubai/Polly-Tootal-s-The-Hands-That-Built-This-City-in-Wordt-Vervolgd

https://www.instituteartist.com/filter/dubai/Courrier-International-publish-The-Hands-That-Built-This-City-by

https://fotoroom.co/the-hands-that-built-this-city-polly-tootal/

https://fotoroom.co/somewhere-in-england-polly-tootal/

https://www.life-framer.com/urban-life-favorite-shot/

https://sixtysixmag.com/polly-tootal/

https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-everyday-england-of-polly-tootals-photographs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-53279397

https://www.life-framer.com/street-life-2020/#iLightbox[gallery-1]/18

https://www.life-framer.com/urban-stories-2019/#iLightbox[gallery-1]/12

Awards 2023 - PhMuseum Womens Photography Grant - 3rd Prize Recipient2019 - Premier Prix, Maison Blanche Award, Photo Marseille - Winner2019 - Voies Off Awards, Arles - Finalist2019 - LensCulture Street Photography Awards - Finalist2019 - Kuala Lumpur International Photography Awards - Finalist2019 - Espy Photography Award - Finalist2015 - Prix Du Public Vile D’Hyeres Photographie2010 - Association of Photographers Assistants Award, Landscape Series Winner

Publications PhMuseum - London BurningVostok Magazine - Climate Crisis IssueSuperstore WildernessPH Museum 2021 Top PicksSixty Six MagazineIcon MagazineCreative Review - Exposure, Gem FletcherGUP magazineMadame Figaro MagazineLes Recontres Philosophiques De MonacoAlvar MagazineLVMH MagazineExit MagazineArtsy Editorial

Exhibitions 2022 - Real Utopias - Collective Hub, Photo Fringe, Brighton, UK2022 - CTY / Unknown Places - Intervalle Gallery - Polly Tootal & Antony Cairns, Paris, France2022 - L'OEIL QUI VOYAGE - Intervalle Gallery, Collective exhibition, Paris, France2021 - LONDONS - The Polycentric City, Mass Collective - London, UK2020 - Mass Collective - Virtual Exhibition URBAN IDENTITIES2019 - Le Festival De Photographie de Marseille, Prix Maison Blanche - Marseille, France
2019 - Rencontres De La Photographie de Marrakech, Morocco2018 - One Contemporary - Venice, Italy2017 - Kestle Barton & Arts Council England - Cornwall, UK2017 - Unseen Photo Fair - Amsterdam, Netherlands2016 - Fotofever - Paris, France2016 - Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam - Netherlands2016 - South Kiosk - London, UK2016 - Galerie Intervalle - Paris, France2015 - Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam - Netherlands2015 - Hyeres Photography Festival Villa Noailes - France2014 - Soffia Gallery, Bulgarian Embassy, London – group exhibition2011 - Higher Pitch, London – group exhibition2010 - Four Corners, London – group Exhibition2009 - Southbank Centre & Hayward Touring Exhibition, Burr Projects, Bridport Dorset, UK

Credit
Design and Build by: Generate Space

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Polly Tootal is a photographer of British landscapes, yet the landscapes she registers are not likely to be found in any popular chronicle of the land, rejecting as they do the obvious beauty or grandeur of things and instead existing in the spaces in-between1, the ones that are passed through every day, so nameless as to be embedded deeply into our consciousness and then forgotten. Perhaps this is why then, despite their surface anonymity, they all seem so uncannily familiar to me.

Polly has talked about a continued fascination with the landscape, and it’s true that there is something obsessive about the scale of her project, the way in which she wants to map modern Britain, creating an extraordinary record of this place that she has always lived.

She uses medium and large format architectural cameras in her work. The work is deliberate. Nothing is frenetic. The gaze is always fixed and level, undiscriminating in focus. Each image is the final act of a slow and considered performance. On the surface the photos seem unadorned. There’s no processing or manipulation afterwards. No smoothing of the rough edges. There’s a piss stain on the side of a building2. Even the litter remains. Starting before dawn and working through the day into the dark, Polly travels Britain looking for her subjects, looking out at “everything we see, might see, have driven past, or rather have missed, not noticed.” Instinct still has a lot to do with the initial selection. It’s gut feeling, a subconscious awareness of the potential energy of space.

When she finds a subject she sets up and waits for the right moment. She only takes a few exposures of the same landscape.

It’s no surprise to discover the Bechers3 are an influence, but compared to their typological surveys4, her project is loose, deceptively objective, varying from image to image. Not concerned with the repetition of specific elements. Not so narrow in its vision. Instead, with each unique image, there’s a subtle vein of drama, an eye open to the strange and the exotic5, the mundane6 and the obscure. Not limiting herself to specialised projects or adhering to restrictive formal rules, she instead takes an interest in atmosphere7, humour8, light and tone, looking to craft a delicate mood or declare a truth about a place. The ultimate goal is of a complex story, a vast and wide-ranging index of the British landscape and a store of unrelated yet connected images.

Common elements hold the project together. The images often lie upon thresholds and boundaries, liminal zones, between urban9 and rural10, leisure11 and industry12, lived in and discarded. Polly is interested in “places where abandoned industry mixes with functioning architecture and development, spaces left awaiting completion13 or areas of recent renewal14.” Whether suburban15, urban or rural, the subjects have, for the most part, been seen from the road16; discovered and observed from the inside of a car. This might be another reason for the strange familiarity the images possess, their sometimes-disturbing déjà vu. I think to myself, how many times have I passed this place? Unknowingly drinking it in and storing it inside. Warehouses, business parks, shopping centres, waste-ground, motor- ways, car parks: the non-places that quietly fill up our lives, the sites of transience. Maybe I’ve seen none of them, but I am certain that I know the Little Chef17, this stretch of motorway18, that patch of industry19, this housing estate20.

The flip side of anonymity is universality. The universal anonymity of these photos tells me another story of modern Britain. It whispers of the silences of sterilised life, the hypermodern, supermodern, whatever you want to call it illusion that history has reached an end- point, the lie that there are no more wars here, that there are no more noises to be made, no more dramas. Banality, apathy, convenience. The Americanisation of the landscape, the triumph of the cost-benefit analysis and the. middle manager and the out-of-town shopping centre.

Some of her images have a whiff of slick professionalism too. Some mirror the antiseptically glorious billboards selling newly built suburban neighbourhoods or stylish urban dwellings. But this is an irony: her images aren’t selling what they represent. They’re offering other things. They’re turning real estate and commerce into an abstraction, making aesthetic objects of ugliness, creating spaces by which to enter into jokes, stories, ideas, useless thoughts, emotions, beauty. It’s an odd and unnerving beauty. Often it’s laced with melancholy. Sometimes with menace and dread. Occasionally the humour is resolutely British, a sly wink, a visual joke and a dash of the absurd.

Internally, there’s a peculiarly blank balance to the images. They possess a perfection of composition that threatens to cancel out visual tension. And yet the images are still tense. The tension they lack is replaced by others. One is of narrative possibility, the suggestion of the story that is inherent in the landscape itself, the drama that has happened or will happen off-camera.

A second comes when viewing the work as a whole. When the images are grouped together there is a sustained or fabricated neutrality, something approaching a rigorous oppression. It arises from the meditative repetition of these perfect, depopulated images. We are not at ease, because we know the real world is rarely this neutral. Denied modulation but encouraged to think poetically, we’re aware of what’s been left outside.

And what has been left outside? Well, people, of course. There are no people in these landscapes. There are no moving objects either. There are no bustling, vibrant markets. And there are no stunning vistas that haven’t been touched by the modern world. If there is woodland there is a motorway bridge21 towering behind it in monumental silence, if there is a valley there happens to be a cement factory, if there is a quarry there is a housing estate it seems to be at war with22. But for all these things it’s the absence of people that I find most interesting. Despite these being landscapes I feel as if they should be there. I find myself yearning for them. But I admire the fact that they will not come. Human portraits are not needed. If you know how to look, these rigorously poetic landscapes tell a story enough.

References

  1. #21405 2008 #21405 2008
  2. #25633 2012 #25633 2012
  3. The Bechers The Bechers
  4. The Bechers, Watertowers The Bechers, Watertowers
  5. #20091 2008 #20091 2008
  6. #49653 2014 #49653 2014
  7. #43545 2014 #43545 2014
  8. #43895 2014 #43895 2014
  9. #30104 2010 #30104 2010
  10. #23342 2011 #23342 2011
  11. #22890 2008 #22890 2008
  12. #22303 2006 #22303 2006
  13. #49714 2014 #49714 2014
  14. #49714 2014 #49714 2014
  15. #57125 2015 #57125 2015
  16. #24425 2012 #24425 2012
  17. #12701 2008 #12701 2008
  18. #58432 2016 #58432 2016
  19. #12010 2001 #12010 2001
  20. #31506 2010 #31506 2010
  21. #12505 2008 #12505 2008
  22. #43406 2014 #43406 2014
#21405 2008
1 #21405 2008
#25633 2012
2 #25633 2012
The Bechers
3 The Bechers
The Bechers, Watertowers
4 The Bechers, Watertowers
#20091 2008
5 #20091 2008
#49653 2014
6 #49653 2014
#43545 2014
7 #43545 2014
#43895 2014
8 #43895 2014
#30104 2010
9 #30104 2010
#23342 2011
10 #23342 2011
#22890 2008
11 #22890 2008
#22303 2006
12 #22303 2006
#49714 2014
13 #49714 2014
#49714 2014
14 #49714 2014
#57125 2015
15 #57125 2015
#24425 2012
16 #24425 2012
#12701 2008
17 #12701 2008
#58432 2016
18 #58432 2016
#12010 2001
19 #12010 2001
#31506 2010
20 #31506 2010
#12505 2008
21 #12505 2008
#43406 2014
22 #43406 2014

Essay by Matthew Parker