Helen Sear

Helen Sear studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, Slade School. Her practice came to prominence in the late 1980s, when she worked primarily through installation, performance and film.

Her photographic works became widely known in the 1991 British Council exhibition, De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe.

She continues to explore ideas of vision, touch, and the re-presentation of the nature of experience. Her work makes particular reference to the human and animal body and her immediate environment in rural Wales and France.

Sear is one of photography’s foremost innovators. For her the medium is one of magic as much as realism. It is never pure, fixed or entirely knowable. Each new series presents a new set of challenges that offer up her fascination with craft and our habits of looking.
David Campany

In creating this collection of photographs celebrating Sussex, internationally acclaimed photographer, Sear spent two years exploring the gardens and landscapes of Sussex. She was drawn to examine the contrast between places where nature has been left to its own devices, and places where plants and landscapes have been carefully cultivated and protected by human intervention.

Visiting inspirational locations – from the arts and crafts legacy of Standen House to the endangered heathland habitat of Iping Common – Sear digitally manipulates and layers images to create beautifully patterned compositions that celebrate nature in all its forms.

Photographer Helen Sear explains her approach to creating the Sussex Portfolio for the new hospital waiting rooms in this 5 minute film by Vasil Dzhagalov.

“I saw parallels between these sites and environments for wellbeing and worked to produce pictures that playfully explore colour and light through combining images in post-production. My central aim was to make pictures that stimulated and engaged hospital users at times of anxiety and in situations when waiting times are often unpredictable”.