Dr Simon Faulkner
Reader in Art History
I am a Reader in Art History with a strong interest in range of different kinds of images and their socio-political uses and meanings.
My past research and PhD (awarded in 1999) focussed on aspects of British art during the mid-twentieth century.
More recent research has been divided into two main areas:
The first area relates to visual practices and Palestine/Israel, which has involved the analysis of forms of art, photography, and visual activism, and resulted in such outputs as the 2015 book Between States jointly written with the Israeli activist and painter David Reeb.
The second area of research is concerned with the use of images on social media. This has involved work on images shared on Twitter during the UK riots of 2011 and work as a co-investigator on an 18-month ESRC Transformative Research project on social media images, entitled 'Picturing the Social'. This project included the setting of a Visual Social Media Lab which has developed methods for researching social media images.
Current work is focussed again on Palestine/Israel and the relationship between fine art practice and the ongoing Israeli occupation.
I have supervised 16 PhDs to completion and welcome PhD enquiries especially in the following areas: mid-twentieth century British art; visual practices and Palestine/Israel; visual images and protest; political symbolism and iconography; the study of social media images.
Research
Simon Faulkner is a member of the Art and Performance Research Hub.
Exhibitions
Faulkner, S., 2015. Documenting Political Struggle in Israel/Palestine, Archiv Kabinett, Berlin, November.
Boydell, S., Faulkner, S., Guy, L., Webb, J., 2015. We Want People Who Can Draw: Instruction and Dissent in the British Art School, Special Collections, Manchester Metropolitan University, April-July.
Faulkner, S., 2008. Desert Generation: 40 Years of Occupation, 1967-2007, Israeli and Palestinian Artists Against the Occupation and for a Just Peace (UK showing), Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art, April-May.
Artefacts
van Aitken, J.V., Campbell, B., Boughton, J., Clewer, N., Bratchford, G., Charlston, L., Faulkner, S., Glynn, S., Lately, D., Lees, L., Roe, L., Russell, D., Suggitt, K., 2017. 'All Materials of Value', distributed artists publication.
Books
Faulkner, S., Reeb, D., 2015. 'Between States', Black Dog Publishing.
Faulkner, S. Aulich, J. Burke, L., 2010. 'The Politics of Cultural Memory', Cambridge Scholars Press, Cambridge.
Faulkner, S. Ramamurthy, R., 2006. 'Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain', Ashgate Publishing, London.
Faulkner, S., 2003. 'Journal special issue on 'Travel and Visual Culture'', Visual Culture in Britain.
Book Chapters
Faulkner, S., Guy, H., Vis, F., 2021. 'Right-wing Populism, Visual Disinformation, and Brexit: From the UKIP 'Breaking Point' poster to the aftermath of the London Westminster Bridge Attack'. In The Routledge Companion to Media Misinformation and Populism, Routledge.
Faulkner, S., 2020. 'Visibility, Photography, and the Occupation: The Case of Activestills Collective'. In Pasternak, G. (eds.) Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict, pp. 184-209, Bloomsbury.
Faulkner, S., 2019. 'Photography and Protest in Israel/Palestine: The Activestills Online Archive'. In The Aesthetics of Global Protest Visual Culture and Communication, Protest and Social Movements.
Faulkner, S., Vis, F., Umoja Noble, S., Guy, H., 2019. 'When Twitter Got #woke: Black Lives Matter, Twitter, and the Appropriation of the Aesthetics of Protest'. In The Aesthetics of Global Protest Visual Culture and Communication, Protest and Social Movements.
Faulkner, S., Vis, F., D'Orazio, F., 2018. 'Analysing Social Media Images'. In Burgess, J., Marwick, A., Poell, T. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, SAGE.
Faulkner, S., 2018. 'Photographic witnessing, the occupation and Palestinian politics'. In Schankweiler, K., Straub, V., Wendl, T. (eds.) Image Testimonies: Witnessing in Times of Social Media, Routledge.
Faulkner, S., 2017. 'The Politics of Here and There'. In Jane Brake (eds.) All Materials of Value: Responses to Walking in Salford, Institute of Urban Dreaming, Manchester.
Faulkner, S., 2016. ''Contentious Displays: Activestills' Street Exhibitions', pp. 74-87.'. In Active Stills Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel, Pluto Press (UK).
Faulkner, S., 2015. 'Aylan Kurdi and the Movability of Images'. In Farida Via, Olga Goriunova (eds.) The Iconic Image on Social Media: A Rapid Research Response to the Death of Aylan Kurdi, Visual Social Media Lab.
Faulkner, S., 2014. 'On Israel/Palestine and the politics of visibility'. In Marciniak, K., Tyler, I. (eds.) Immigrant protest: politics, aesthetics and everyday dissent, pp. 147-168, State University of New York Press.
Faulkner, S., 2013. 'British Pop Art and the High/Low Divide'. In A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present, pp. 156-179.
Faulkner, S., 2013. 'Seen at a Distance'. In Martin Roberts (eds.) Caught in the Crossfire: Artistic Responses to Conflict, Peace and Reconciliation, 8-10, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry.
Vis, F., Faulkner, F., Parry, K., Manyukhina, Y., Evans, L., 2013. 'Twitpic-ing the riots: Analysing images shared on Twitter during the 2011 UK riots'. In K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (eds.) Twitter and Society, Peter Lang, New York.
Faulkner, S., 2012. 'The Institutional Life'. In Gavin Parry and David Penny (eds.) Anatomy of an Institution, Anatomy Projects.
Faulkner, S., 2011. 'To those who were supposed to be with us'. In Roi Kuper (eds.) To Eat of the Leviathan Flesh Trilogy, 5-11, Possibility of a Book, Holon, Israel.
Faulkner, S., 2009. 'Land, landscape and the wild zone of power'. In Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem (eds.) Nature/Nation, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem.
Faulkner, S., 2008. 'Picturing the Oslo Process: Photography, Painting and the Belated Occupation'. In Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest (eds.) Photography Between Poetry and Politics: The Critical Position of the Photographic Medium in Contemporary Art, chapter 7, 103-121, Leuven University Press.
Faulkner, S., 2007. 'Art, Occupation, and Responsibility'. In David Reeb (eds.) David Reeb: Paintings 2006-2007, ednt, Tel Aviv.
Faulkner, S., 2007. 'Painting Like a Fan? Peter Blake in the 1950s'. In Christoph Grunenberg and Laurence Sillars (eds.) Peter Blake: A Retrospective, chapter 1, Tate Publishing, London.
Faulkner, S., 2007. 'The Artist as Memory-Worker'. In Angus Boulton (eds.) Restricted Areas, MIRIAD.
Faulkner, S., 2006. 'Homoexoticism: John Minton in London and Jamaica, 1950-1951'. In Tim Barringer, Douglas Fordham, Geoff Quilley (eds.) Art and the British Empire, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Faulkner, S., 2006. 'Late Colonial Exoticism: John Minton and Jamaica, 1950-1952'. In Faulkner, S. Ramamurthy, A. (eds.) Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain, Ashgate Publishing, London.
Faulkner, S., 2000. 'The History Behind the Surface: R. B. Kitaj and the Spanish Civil War'. In J. Aulich, J. Lynch (eds.) Critical Kitaj, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Faulkner, S., 1999. 'Hockney a la Picasso in Historical Context (translated into French)'. In Musee Picasso (eds.) David Hocknet: Dialogue Avec Picasso, Musee Picasso, Paris.
Faulkner, S., 1995. 'Dealing with Hockney'. In Paul Melia (eds.) David Hockney, Manchester University Press.
Internet Publications
Faulkner, S., Vis, F., Guy, H., 2020. 'Verifying and questioning images.', https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-3/investigating-actors-content/5-verifying-and-questioning-images.
Faulkner, S., 2016. 'Images at a Distance', Regarding Spectatorship: Revolt and the Distant Observer, http://www.regardingspectatorship.net/images-at-a-distance/.
Faulkner, S., 2008. 'David Reeb: Painting Bil'in and elsewhere', Ma'arav, http://www.maarav.org.il/classes/PUItem.php?lang=ENG&id=1223.
Faulkner, S., 2007. 'Preoccupied with Conflict (Review of Dateline Israel: New Photography and Video Art, Jewish Museum, New York, 2007', NYFA Current, www.nyfa.org.
Journal Articles
Faulkner, S., 2024. 'Introduction: Visibility, images, Palestine/Israel', Visual Studies, 39 (3), pp. 351-357.
Faulkner, S., 2024. 'Invasion Images and Seeing Gaza', Visual Culture in Britain, pp. 1-5.
Faulkner, S., 2019. 'Late photography, military landscapes and the politics of memory', The Open Arts Journal, 3, pp. 123-136.
Thelwall, M., Goriunova, O., Burns, A., Faulkner, S., Vis, F., Aulich, J., Mas-Bleda, A., Stuart, E., D'Orazio, F., 2016. 'Chatting through pictures? A classification of images tweeted in one week in the UK and USA', Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (11), pp. 2575-2586.
Faulkner, S., 2013. 'Images and demonstrations in the occupied West Bank', JOMEC Journal: Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies.
Faulkner, S., 2012. 'The most photographed wall in the world', Photographies, 5 (2), pp. 223-242.
Faulkner, S., 2010. 'David Reeb: The politics of here and there', Programma, 3.
Faulkner, S., 2010. 'Review of 'The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography' (Mike Roobinson and David Picard, eds)', Visual Culture in Britain, 11/2, 300-305.
Faulkner, S., 2009. 'Photography in the service of citizenship: Ariella Azoulay’s Act of State', Programma, 1, 129-135.
Faulkner, S., Leaver, A., Vis, F., Williams, K., 2008. 'Art for art's sake or selling up?', European Journal of Communication, 23 (3), pp. 295-317.
Faulkner, S., 2007. 'The Black Box of the Occupation Revisited: Photography, Responsibility, and the Israeli Occupation', Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, 35:3, 13-16.
Faulkner, S., 2003. '"Asylum Seekers", Imagined Geography and Visual Culture', Visual Culture in Britain, April 2003.
Faulkner, S., 2000. 'Art, Cigarettes and Visual Culture in the Sixties: The Peter Stuyvesant Foundation and the New Generation Exhibitions, 1964-66', Visual Culture in Britain, 2000.
Faulkner, S., 1997. 'Reconsidering the object of art: 1965-1975 - Goldstein,A, Rorimer,A', ART HISTORY, 20 (2), pp. 324-331.
Presentations
Faulkner, S., 2017. 'The Iconic Image on Social Media workshop (with Farida Vis, Anne Burns, Ray Drainville, Alexandra Boutopoulou)', CCCBLab, Centre de Cultura Contemporánia, Barcelona, 18 February.
Faulkner, S., 2016. 'Palestinian press photographers, Facebook, and the presentation of the political self', Picturing the Social 2016, The Whitworth, Manchester, 20 June.
Faulkner, S., 2016. 'Photography, politics, and visibility in Israel/Palestine: Activestills street exhibitions 2006-2014', Art, Expression, and Democracy, University of Sheffield, April.
Vis, F., Faulkner, S., 2016. 'The Iconic Image on Social Media: The Death of Aylan Kurdi', Understanding Visual Culture, University of Bologna, April.
Faulkner, S., 2015. 'A Civil Contract of the Networked Photographic Image?', Selfie Citizenship, Manchester Metropolitan University, April.
Faulkner, S., 2015. 'What is a Social Media Image?', What is an Image?, University of Copenhagen, April.
Faulkner, S., 2015. 'What is a Twitter Image?', International Visual Methods Conference, University of Brighton, September.