Polly Braden's Projects

Polly Braden is a documentary photographer whose work features an ongoing conversation between the people she photographs and the environment in which they find themselves. Highlighting the small, often unconscious gestures of her subjects, Polly particularly enjoys long-term, in depth collaborations that in turn lends her photographs a unique, quiet intimacy. Polly has produced a large body of work that includes not only solo exhibitions and magazine features, but most recently four books: Adventures in the Lea Valley (Hoxton Mini Press, 2016), Great Interactions: Life with Learning Disabilities and Autism (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2016) Out of the Shadows: The Untold Story of People with Autism or Learning Disabilities (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2018) alongside the writer Sally Williams and London’s Square Mile: A Secret City (Hoxton Mini Press, 2019) with text by historian David Kynaston.

There are around 1.5 million people in the UK with a learning disability and 700,000 people in the UK with autism. MacIntyre is a national charity which provides learning, support and care for children and adults with a learning disability and autism. For the past two years, renowned photographer Polly Braden has worked with MacIntyre and the people they support, to document the everyday interactions and experiences that really matter to them. The result is Great Interactions, a beautiful and moving book published by Dewi Lewis Publishing and a major exhibition hosted by the National Media Museum.

There are around 1.5 million people in the UK with a learning disability and 700,000 with autism. Photographer Polly Braden has spent two years working with just a few who are supported by MacIntyre *, a charity that provides more than 1500 children and adults with learning, support and care. Her photographs look at the everyday moments, achievements and milestones. The subject is complex but the aim is simple: to highlight everyday interactions and life-changing experiences. These are stories about the barriers faced in life, but they are also inspiring, often filled with moments of achievement in things which once seemed difficult if not impossible – from finding employment or using public transport to gaining a measure of independence, graduating from high school or getting married. Great Interactions looks to engage decision-makers and the wider public to ensure that people with a learning disability receive the same opportunities as anyone else. ‘In these intimate photos, Polly Braden captures the inner lives of people with differences and disabilities. She sees their dignity and their sometime pathos; their humor and their disappointment; their optimism and their ability to love. Above all, she documents their intense individuality, and makes you see each one as an independent being. This is not a portrait of disability, but a series of portraits of people with disabilities. It is achieved with clarity, respect, and wit.’ —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From The Tree * MacIntyre is a leading national charity providing learning, support, education and care to over 1500 children, young people and adults with learning disabilities, complex needs and autism, and their families across England and Wales. In 2016 it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

China Between is a photographic essay on the modern city culture of contemporary China. When the Peoples’ Republic set up its Special Economic Zones in the 1980s communist China entered into global trade and international capital. The goal was financial but new money also brought new values and new ways of life. Polly Braden’s photography is an intimate response to the material and psychological effects of the changes experienced by the country’s new urban class. Shot over three years in Shanghai, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Kunming, China Between is a revelatory portrait. Braden shows how a casual glance, a moment of doubt or a quick trip to the shopping mall can tell us as much about modern China as any image of a dam, a protest or a teeming workforce. It was in the mid-1990s while she was living in the town of Yangzhou (where Mao was born) that Polly Braden first took up photography. Making sense of the camera and making sense of China have gone hand in hand. Since then she has amassed a huge archive of images, some made on assignment for magazines but most made speculatively. Although there have been plenty of great shots along the way China Between is not simply a collection of extraordinary images. It has taken most of those years to find the right photographic approach and the majority of images presented here were made in the last three years. What she was trying to discover, without fully knowing it for a long while, was a form of observing, shooting and editing that might express the complicated relation between everyday life in China’s burgeoning cities and the great transformations that have been taking place there. — David Campany, writer and curator These photographs are at once anthropological documents and a personal travelogue; a series of intimate portraits and, more generally, studies of a country undergoing a massive transition from a predominantly agrarian to an urban culture. — Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine