Sarah Howe

Lecturer
Photography

Working across mediums of photography, writing, moving image and installation my work aims to create intimate personal encounters and collisions with storytelling from diverse social, economic, and political contexts. Through collaboration with other people, my research informed practice contributes to cross disciplinary enquires on mental health, identity, and contemporary portraiture. The work aims to make visible the inevitably close relationships and mutually implicating effects of each of us living within the ever-connected societies of today.

My work has been presented internationally in galleries, independent project spaces, and academic conferences. It has also featured in artist publications, magazines and online journals. My research relies on collaboration with others, which has led to projects with neighbours, friends, online and offline communities, students and other artists living across different yet mutually implicating social contexts. My practice adopts established research methodologies such as interviewing to collect original findings and then assesses these materials through artistic practice and creative technologies such as video editing.

Collaboration has allowed me to offer a platform to marginalised voices within my community. My installation ‘Consider Falling’, which was a result of a project of the same name, began with primary research into the experiences of service users at the Maudsley Hospital in London South diagnosed with the underdiagnosed condition called derealisation. The condition leads patients concerned that that their realities are unreal. The condition is linked to another condition called depersonalisation, which describes a feeling of detachment from oneself, or that oneself is unreal. The installation has been exhibited at multiple venues and has allowed service users a way to share their experience with others. It has contributed to further research in DPD and the role of the arts in health settings.

I teach on the BA Photography programme at MMU and contribute to the Arts and Humanities research centre. Along with students, staff and alumni from art departments at Kingston, Goldsmiths, and Manchester Metropolitan universities, I am a member of the collective A Particular Reality, which works to platform voices of the marginalised within academic and arts organisations.

I studied Photographic Arts at Westminster University and later Photography at the Royal College of Art, where I also completed a PGCert in Art and Design Education through the RCA Teaching Fellowship.