Black & White Past Projects
What follows is a catalog of prior personal photographic projects spanning Francis Minien's full career to date.
4 New York
(2003 - Ongoing)
A body of work from my ongoing personal work photographing New York in all its glory though Black and White film photography. This is a casual project for me that has waves of production and periods of time depending of my mood and the city’s mood. This is street photography with no fixed agenda, just a focus on the city through a black and white lens.
C*** Like Mine
(2020 - 2021)
In recent years the notions of 'toxic masculinity' have become mainstream brought on by the #MeToo movement, this has led to a great deal of scrutiny from all sides as well as leading a portion of us males to address who we are and how we act. This body of work, using found imagery, explores masculinity in terms of its treatment of sexuality, yes visually we see men and their sexuality but one could argue how is it seen by a man, how do men feel about sexuality or how do the categorize sexuality as part of their own masculinity.
The Faces of Microfinance USA
(2009)
A commission for the Microfinance USA conference sponsored by two hosting organizations Accion and Opportunity Fund. The commission saw me visiting and documenting a few success stories of Microfinance in america in both New York and San Francisco. The aim was to put faces to the finance, visualizing what success was and the people engaging in microfinance loans to further their lives and their families lives. The resulting body of work is a collection of environmental portraits from the people whose business I traveled to meet.
Perspectives
(2003 - 2010)
I first visited New York city in 2003 on a work assignment for three months. It was a city that never really featured in my travel plans, but it forever changed my life. It triggered everything I loved about black and white photography and architecture. The results ended up forming this body of work exploring the cities architectural landscape and its mesh of styles, materials, shapes and forms to create 2D imagery of its multi layered 3D architectural perspectives.
WOMAD
(2000 - 2001)
The World of Music Arts and Dance (WOMAD) Festival was a global festival that had its UK event hosted in the town of Reading (UK) for 17 years from 1996 to 2013. It was hosted on the same sight as the infamous Reading Rock Festival but drew its roots from the culture of world Music in all its forms. I had the pleasure of attending, working at and photographing the festival for 10 years. For this body of work i chose a period of time i was working in Black and White photographing the festival over a period of 3 years.
Human Remains
(1996 - 1998)
This body of work explores urban decay in the former manufacturing town of Leicester in the UK. The series of black and white photographs were taken over a two-year period as an exploration of the city’s decaying infrastructure.
The photographs examine what was left behind, what was allowed to be trashed and what nature had started to reclaim and a new human underbelly had started to inhabit.