Dr Gary Bratchford

Gary’s teaching and research focus around notions of power, politics, visibility and space. Gary’s photographic practice centres on collaborative and participatory visual practices, including socially engaged, process-based community projects.

Gary has published work on visual sociology and visual methods, visual social media, the Internet and activism in Israel/Palestine, visual processes of urbanisation and gentrification in the UK as well examining how photography can positively impact upon health and wellbeing in community settings.

Gary’s initial research interests focused on the use and function of photography and performance by Israeli and Palestinian non-violent protesters, specifically for online, international audiences between 2005-2011 as well as photographic and artist practices of visualising power, identity and space in this region. The culmination of this research was presented in Gary’s first major curatorial project, Visual Rights (2020) at the Open Eye Gallery, which placed an emphasis on visualising by foregrounding the artistic process and methods rather than the aesthetic outcome.

Gary’s new areas of research are based upon his own collaborative and process-based photography as well as analysing and employing practice-based visual methods in three distinct areas. Firstly, Gary is co-developing research (with Dr Dennis Zuev) on verticality, new aerial visions and scopic regimes. The project is entitled ‘A Sociology of the Sky’. This project’s first output is an edited collection of papers in the Visual Studies Journal (forthcoming 2020) as well as a core component of their co-edited monograph, Visual Sociology: Practices and Politics in Contested Spaces (forthcoming 2020, Palgrave).

Secondly, though his collaborative, community-based practice with artist, Robert Parkinson, Gary uses Socially Engaged approaches to examine how photography can foster community and support health and wellbeing. Recent publications in the field include his book, As and When: Documenting Socially Engaged Practice (2017), Socially Engaged Photography and Wellbeing: Reflections on a Case Study in the Northwest of England (Journal of London Primary Care, 2018) and an essay for Stephen Willat’s CONTROL magazine in 2019.

Lastly, Gary is writing, researching and developing visual methods to map urbanisation and gentrification in Manchester and Salford, UK with recent outputs including: “Visualising the invisible: a guided walk around the Pendleton Housing Estate, Salford, UK” (2019) and a chapter in an edited volume, Gentrification Around the World Vol 1: Gentrifiers and the displaced (Palgrave, 2020).