Past Projects
What follows is a catalog of prior personal photographic projects spanning Francis Minien's full career to date.
In Between Borders
(2017)
Every day we see things. That we pay no attention to. A curtain. A wall. A vase. They pass through our acknowledging eyes to our subconscious and are recorded as uneventful, and our attention moves on. But if you stop your eyes for a moment, adjust your focus, you may see the color, the light, the symmetry that makes the everyday beautiful.
The body of work is set to a back drop of the photographers return to his adopted home (NYC), his experience and response to the everyday, amidst a sea of personal, cultural and political change.
Boring Landmarks
(2005- 2020)
Visiting landmarks is a rite of travel, we dream, we aspire and we want to see these wonders of the world. The tourist industry presents us with an enhanced reality showing us the perfect world we inhabit, enticing us to explore and visit these wonders.
Since the rise of digital photography and the sophistication of digital editing we are subject to the perfect image of the perfect world. This body of work is a response to the digital enhanced realities we are sold, these digital masks have taken the sheen off our experiences.
Beach Eye’s
(2007- 2013)
This project is born from a lifetime of being short sighted. Simply put, I wear glasses and when I take them off, the world becomes a different place. I am suddenly transferred into a landscape less ordinary, an almost surreal world of moving shapes and splashes of colour. The light bouncing and reflecting with all the movement on the beach - people, water, clouds, balls, umbrellas, dogs.
Tourist Tat
(2005- 2018)
Travelling can lead one to undiscovered treasures.
Tourist tat* is a discovery of these 'treasures'. It is a collection of photographs from my travels around the world, focusing on what must be a billion dollar industry. We visit and we buy, some of the most kitsch and audacious memorabilia around simply because we visited or went somewhere.
Masala Beach
(2005- Ongoing)
For my series Masala Beach I explore beach life culture in India. Exploring its traditions and cultures and documenting the influence of modern and foreign cultures on what is a hub for life in many coastal regions. Its evolution is in some ways one of the battlefields for the culture shift in India on several topics and many levels.
India is known for life on the street, this extends to the beach and with around 7000km of coastline, the beach becomes an integral part of life and culture, and if you do not live on the coast, then simply the allure to visit offers a piece of its culture.
Viewpoint
(1997 - 2017)
Travelling the world allows one to visit spectacular and breathtaking sites. I am always drawn and fall in love with tourism and its impact and mark on our travels. This body of work explores a still life approach to beautiful viewpoints and the telescopes we often find at iconic and famous locations.
I enjoy the irony of the ‘viewfinder’, its suggestion that looking through the telescope here and you will be enlightened with a better view that what sprawls out in front of you, but sometimes really we just need to open your eyes and admire the view, unaided.
Where Did My Toys Go?
(2004 - 2014)
The series evolved after one day a close friend asked me; when did I last climb a tree? What a question, when did I? When was that day that all the joys of childhood slipped away and I became that teenager that was too cool to climb a tree? With this notion came many images and many more thoughts, when did I put away my Action Man or where did my sister’s Barbie go!? Come to think of it, Where did my toys go?
With this collection of staged photographs I wanted to evoke memories of one’s youth and childhood on an adult scale.
Street Corners
(2013)
This project is born from a personal intrigue into the New York City Street corner, a hub of the community and often and cultural icon in terms of the businesses that frequent them. Marry this with the city that never sleeps and these corners become a hive of activity after the sun goes down.
The project was continued throughout the year and brought together street corners from all over Manhattan - after dark.
The Last Great Wilderness
(2011- 2012)
The Journey to the South Pole has been a quest for over 100 years. Some of the most notable, honorable and hardiest of the worlds Adventurers and Explorers have risen to the challenge to conquer the White Continent.
2011 marked the 100th anniversary of Amundsen’s great feet of reaching the South Pole, being the first man to do so and beating Scott to the title. Inspired by the tales and stories of these great Polar Explorers and inspired by the work of Frank Hurley I embarked on my own adventure, albeit with a little more comfort that these great men, on an expedition to the last great wilderness.
1 Day 1 Photo
(2011 - 2012)
From September 1st 2011 until August 31st 2012 I took a year out from the professional working world and embarked on a world tour. I endeavored to take 1 photograph every day for a year I was on the road.
I completed the body of work, the most extensive body of work I had completed. After this year I did not pick up my camera again for some months and when I did it was nothing serious or more than a few snaps, the year had drained me.
Damaged Goods
(2010 - 2011)
This collection of photographs has been a long time coming but in essence it is a smashing reaction to reality. We have lived through a tough few years and we have experienced a great deal of change in our society and in our lives.
I wanted to create a body of work that was familiar and brought smiles to the audience yet was reflective of where we are today in a society. Damaged Goods is a reflection of today’s world whilst giving us some familiar flavours.
Plane Desert
(2011)
My interest in in urban decay has been a theme within my work for many years. First stemming from my black and white work in the 1990's in former industrial towns in the northern England.
Ever since I have sought for interesting stories and visuals telling a story of the waste and decay we humans leave behind especially in terms of scale and decline in cultural interests.
Here I discover and spent time at an airplane graveyard in Arizona. A vast graveyard for planes deposited for storage that slowly decline into parts and eventually skeletons of their former beings.
Neon Boneyard
(2007/2011)
My interest in in urban decay has been a theme within my work for many years. First stemming from my black and white work in the 1990's in former industrial towns in the northern England.
Ever since I have sought for interesting stories and visuals telling a story of the waste and decay we humans leave behind especially in terms of scale and decline in cultural interests.
I discovered the Neon Bone Yard in 2007 and then revisited in 2011, a phenomenal cultural graveyard to an era of Las Vegas that has long since passed. Old Casino signs sit collected but still discarded in the Nevada sun and dust.
Destined Ethnography II
(2005 - 2010)
This is the second installment of an ongoing photographic essay observing my travels as a photographer. The portfolio depicts the visual experience of my travels not as a travel log but as an abstraction of form of the environments I have found myself passing through.
The work conveys a photographic expressionism of my world and my emotions through these travels. Photographs taken as if they are of a state of mind or the language of my emotions – what am I seeing when I think or what have I been thinking to see.
Landitecture
(2004 - 2014)
This series explores the relationships of nature and its landscapes and humankind and its architecture. I explore these relationships using the form of the buildings and compliments them with their natural environment highlighting the cohabitation between man’s creations and evolution.
The photographs attempt to convey this relationship in the simplest manner whilst evoking beautiful color photographs. The stone colors of architecture, the greens of nature and the blues of the sky.
Voting Into History
(2008)
November 4th, 2008 - US Presidential election day that was touted to be a historic day with Barack Obama on the verge of becoming the fist African American President. This body of work sought to document Manhattan during election day. A hive of activity and expectation for a country in the midst of a financial crisis. A country looking for change it could believe in.
Bonaire Swim Club
(2008)
Whilst visiting the small island of Bonaire in the Caribbean, I stumbled across and Man who has been running a swimming club for children and adults for years. Teaching in the swimmers in ocean from a pier in the town of Kralendijk. I documented one of his swimming lessons for a class of about 40 children. This man has, over the years taught an estimated 20,000 plus children and adults to swim. A pure joy watching him teach the children not only just to swim but also instilling discipline and life lesson along the way - an unsung hero.
BCUK
(2000 - 2005)
Boscombe’s status and standing comes as a result of what was a huge growth in post war domestic tourism, resorts grew complacent and with the huge demand which exceeded supply they developed the resorts to cater for this growth, for Boscombe this included a huge employment strategy from Liverpool and the surrounding areas.
The body of work explores Boscombe from 2000 through to 2007. In a time when it was at the bottom of decline caught in a gap between regeneration of seaside towns in the UK, but also and economy that did not support the ability to change or move with the times.It explores the small seaside town documenting the people and place that makes up the town. Recording a sense of the style and quirks of the town that have evolved slower and behind the times due to a poor economic outlook for its residents.
Macabre Thoughts Of Future Mortality
(2004 - 2005)
“Society no longer observes a pause: the disappearance of an individual no longer affects its continuity. Everything…goes on as if nobody died anymore” Philippe Aries. The hour of our death. 1981
Macabre thoughts of Future Mortality is a collection of images representing 15 chosen subjects’ thoughts of their own death based on fears, emotions, personal experiences, or dreams.
The Road
(2007)
Over 100 years ago, Horatio Nelson began on the most famous and arguably first road trip across America in what was then known as the ‘horseless carriage’. He traveled from San Francisco to New York.
Today the American road trip is a cultural journey and travel industry unto itself, from the purists journey on a Harley Davidson travelling East to West to the family vacation experience in an RV.
This trip was for myself, an immigrant, following in the foot steps of many travelers, writers such as Jack Kerouac and photographers such as Stephen Shore, these photographs document my journey. I traveled 3,500 Miles, from Las Vegas to New York.
Street Faces
(2005 - 2008)
This body of work explores the everyday faces that we see on our New York Streets, they just happen not to be humans.
In the arguably faceless city that New York is often described, it is often not the people we pass in the street, that stick in our minds but in many ways the fictitious faces we come across, from graffiti to advertising, to the bizarre. The photographs show a relevance to the genres of new York's ‘faces’, sculpted or fashioned, artistic or playful to name but a few.
Coney Island
(2008)
Coney Island is synonymous with New York and in American popular culture; it is the Blackpool of America’s East Coast, Home to the world Famous Astroland Amusement Park. It is now as the final season for Astroland this summer, the last of the Amusement parks on the Island.
For this project I decided focus on the miles of boardwalk than runs through Coney Island. It dissects the Urban Landscape on the edge of decline and the Beach with its hints of regeneration. The Boardwalk is the front line in which the areas landscape has been fought over, between is residents, its businesses, its tourists and its developers.
The British Seaside
(1998 - 2008)
This series of work has been compiled over a period of 10 years documenting the best of British seaside life from all over the country. The work explores and depicts the eclectic and quirky culture of the British Seaside.
Snap! Tourist Season
(2006 - 2012)
This series documents my ongoing work looking at the fascination with the world of tourism.
These images document some classic poses for the family image or must have shot of people’s travels and ‘the’ shot in front of the landmark.
Despite the notions of travels, adventure and an essence of the mystic whilst on ones travels, travelers at the moments of reaching those dreamed of places often forget to smile…
Trans Mongolian Railway
(2005)
The Trans Mongolian Railway runs in both directions between Moscow and Beijing stretching over 6500 kilometers, passing through vast agricultural lands and huge rotting industrial hulks that remain as a reminder of an era which is all but forgotten in the everyday.
This extraordinary journey started in Beijing and finished in Red Square, Moscow. We experienced the dust storms of the Gobi Desert, the extreme cold of Southern Siberia, the rain and wind of the Russian Steppe and the heat of Moscow and its industrial surrounds.
Street Jesus
(2006 - 2008)
A slow moving project capturing life for religious artifacts found in everyday life but not necessarily where one would assume to see them. In a world that no longer fears re-appropriation of religious artifacts, icons and symbols we see familiar sites appear in unfamiliar places.