• Interviews
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Videos
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About
  • Write for us
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Privacy policy
Pellicola Magazine
Pellicola Magazine
  • Interviews
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Videos
  • Submit
  • About us
  • Article

Giving an identity to the unknown: Toby Coulson’s hedges and faces

  • 05/09/2017
  • 2 minute read

Toby Coulson

When we set a photographer into a specific artistic trend rather than another we are simply considering his or her work as a monolithic block. Probably it has always been the biggest problem of critics showing such narrow judges and pigeonholing artists into this or that.
The work of an artist can shift from a style to another during the time or be a kaleidoscope at the same time.
Why such a foreword? Because we are going to introduce Toby Coulson, the photographer of hedges and portraits. One might think ‘Oh hedges, wow such a way to diminish the photographer’ whilst Coulson gives us an interesting interpretation of hedges, they are the way people seek their privacy but also a form of expression (the way people lovingly shape or sculpt them).
Coulson said that he was highly influenced by the American photographer Joel Sternfeld and his work American Prospects (1987), and the American society is the one that seeks its privacy behind a fence rather than a hedge that it’s more appropriate for English society.
What Coulson also admires of Sternfeld is the use of colour, in fact Joel Sternfeld work helped to establish colour photography as a respected artistic medium during the 70’s.
However, it is also the works of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Diane Arbus that influenced his personal project Belfast Road. Like the Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach, famous for the portrait of Martin Luther, Coulson is a modern acute portraitist. He moved to Belfast Road five years ago. This small street in the heart of North East London offers him an ethnical diversity and a kaleidoscope of cultures.
This combination of cultures mixed to his talent turned everyday and banal subjects into intriguing beautiful portraits. He spent a year photographing people of the area, spending time with the subjects and building a relationship with them.
Coulson stated that photography is a market place over saturated, but what is obvious is that his work emerges from the mass, from the faces of shots we see every day on social networks, because his faces are in the middle between fascinating and strange, plus he seems to have the knowledge of paint portraiture’s roots .
Saying that, it is hard to imagine Coulson at a very early age photographing chickens and cats as he said in many interviews.

Toby Coulson
Toby Coulson
Toby Coulson
Toby Coulson

All images © Toby Coulson
Written by Anna Trifirò

Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Previous Article
Vincent Beck Mathieu
  • Article

Wandering along the south coast of France with Vincent Beck Mathieu

  • 18/08/2017
read more
Next Article
Maéva Lecoq
  • Interview

Interview with Maéva Lecoq

  • 07/09/2017
read more
You May Also Like
Chloe Milos Azzopardi
read more
  • Article

Chloé Milos Azzopardi’s drawing of a metamorphic system of things

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 01/02/2023
read more
  • Article

Lindsay Godin’s future outer space system

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 22/09/2022
Angelo Vignali - How to Raise a Hand
read more
  • Article

A sculpture of memory and identity in Angelo Vignali’s visual short circuits

  • Anna Bulgarelli
  • 24/06/2022
Chiara Ernandes - Still Birth
read more
  • Article

Chiara Ernandes: A Contradictory Birth

  • Claudia Bigongiari
  • 06/04/2022
Antonio Miucci - Arcadia
read more
  • Article

Antonio Miucci’s Arcadia reclaims otherness as a space of awareness and affirmation

  • Gaia Amorello
  • 16/03/2022
Marina Caneve - Entre Chien et Loup
read more
  • Article

Between fragments and stratifications: Marina Caneve’s gaze on place identity.

  • Anna Bulgarelli
  • 02/03/2022
Davide Degano - Sclavanie
read more
  • Article

The complexity of border areas in Davide Degano’s photographs

  • Michela Coslovich
  • 16/02/2022
Wiosna Van Bon - Family Stranger
read more
  • Article

The destructuring of stigma in Wiosna Van Bon’s social practice

  • Nikola Lorenzin
  • 09/02/2022

Subscribe now to our newsletter

  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Contact
  • About
  • Write for us
  • Privacy policy

Input your search keywords and press Enter.