Ken Grant


Ken Grant is a photographer who since the 1980s has concentrated on working class life in the Liverpool area. He is a lecturer in the MFA photography course at the University of Ulster.

Life and career

Born in Liverpool in 1967, Grant worked as a carpenter in Liverpool after finishing school, even then taking photographs. He later studied at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, studying under Martin Parr and Paul Graham.
According to a publication by American Suburb X, Grant tends to work slowly, returning again and again to the same places and becoming a familiar sight to the people who gather there.
The Close Season was published by Dewi Lewis over a decade after Grant had first met Lewis; the photographs in No Pain Whatsoever were taken over a span of more than two decades.
Writing in The Observer, Sean O'Hagan has described the No Pain Whatsoever series as "from the same great British tradition as the work of Chris Killip and Graham Smith. . . a record of a time when working-class traditions were under threat from Thatcherism."
Writing in The Independent, Brian Viner said "The photographs. . . show Grant's wonderfully keen eye for the humdrum realities of everyday working-class – or more accurately, unemployed – existence in the 1980s and beyond. . . It is the instinct of the social documentarian, and Grant deserves to rank alongside the better-known Martin Parr as one of the best." Diane Smyth, writing in the British Journal of Photography about Grant's book Flock said "Grant avoids making easy statements in favour of simple observation. Even so, by recording these everyday working lives, he's made a series that matters."
As influences and inspirations, Grant has cited Raymond Carver, Fred Voss, Terence Davies, Christer Strömholm, Bruce Davidson, and Gil Scott-Heron.
Grant was the course leader of the BA Documentary Photography course at the University of Wales, Newport between 1998 and 2013, when he became a lecturer in the MFA Photography course at the University of Ulster.

Collections

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Joint exhibitions

Exhibitions at festivals

  • The Birdhouse, various venues in Hereford, Hereford Photography Festival, England, 2012.

Exhibitions as curator

  • Condition Report: New Photographic Art from the Czech Republic. Ffotogallery 2010; Hoopers Gallery, 2011. Photographs by Kateřina Držková, Jan Měřička, Zdeněk Květoň, Radek Květoň, Vojtěch Fröhlich, and Tereza Příhodová.
  • Double Take: Photographs from the Keith Medley Archive, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2013. Photographs by Keith Medley, curated for an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool by Grant and Mark Durden.

Books

Photobooks by Grant

  • The Close Season. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2002.. With a story by James Kelman.
  • The Birdhouse. Commissioned by the Elmley Foundation and in association with the Edgar Street Grid partnership, 2013. Edition of 500. Large magazine format. Looks at the people and the birds who inhabit a poultry market in Hereford.
  • Shankly One. Southport: Café Royal, 2013. Edition of 200. Later reprinted.
  • Shankly Two. Southport: Café Royal, 2013. Edition of 200. Later reprinted.
  • One Day in July near Cable Street Southport. Southport: Café Royal, 2013. Edition of 200. Later reprinted.
  • From the Provy to the Derry. Southport: Café Royal, 2013. Edition of 200. Later reprinted.
  • No Pain Whatsoever. Stockholm: Journal, 2014.. Edition of 1000.
  • Flock. Dublin: Artist Photo Books, 2014.. Edition of 750.
  • A Topical Times for These Times: A Book of Liverpool Football. Bristol: RRB, 2016.. Edition of 1000 copies. With an essay by Niall Griffiths and a short text by Grant.
  • Benny Profane. Bristol: RRB, 2019.. Edition of 500 copies.

Other publications