12 Mar 2025 08:23
252 - Ian Macdonald
Ian Macdonald (b. 1946) is an internationally acclaimed photographer born and raised in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, UK. He studied Graphic Design and Printmaking at Teesside College of Art in 1968 and went on to study Painting and Photography at Sheffield School of Art, Photography and Graphic Design at Birmingham Polytechnic and Education at Lancaster University. He pursued photography alongside drawing – his first love - painting and printmaking.
Since 1968, Ian has consistently photographed the people and places of Teesside, one of Europe’s most heavily industrialised areas in the north east of England. His love of the region, the beauty of the landscape – great expanses of wildness nestling among industrial settings - and his solid admiration for the people working and living amongst this environment has resulted in a completely honest and passionate depiction of a place and its community.
“The most successful of my photographs seem to be a product of an exploration into my environment and the people I live and work amongst and an excitement generated in me by what I confront. Sometimes by-product would seem a more appropriate term, because only rarely do images really come near to saying anything about the strength, humour, vitality, atmosphere, pathos and despair which seems to make up what goes on around us all. Always, I am spurred on by a tingling sensation at the possibility, this time, perhaps, the image may really say something”.
Ian’s work has been included in various publications, such as England Gone, Smith’s Dock Shipbuilders, Images of the Tees, Eton and The Blast Furnace. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many private and public photography collections around the world. In 2024 Ian had a major retrospective entitled Fixing Time, covering the first twenty years of his work, displayed across two venues in the north east of England - Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.
Ian is currently working on a series of forthcoming books with GOST Books.
In episode 252, Ian discusses, among other things:
- His recent dual exhibitions, Fixing Time, in the North East of England
- How his fascination for drawing took him to art college
- His discomfort with his work being put in the documentary pigeonhole
- Finding it hard to approach your subjects
- A brief description of the area he grew up and photographed in
- His transition from drawing to photography
- Greatham Creek and the portrait (above) that made him excited
- His early memories of his grandfather and father and wanting to celebrate and document their history
- His year spent as artist in residence at Eton College
- His reasons for choosing to teach in a school and not at art college
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