Portrait of Simon Norfolk by Mohammed Khalil at White Light Photo Studio in Kabul.

Biography

Simon was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1963 and educated in England finishing at Oxford and Bristol Universities with a degree in Philosophy and Sociology. After leaving the Documentary Photography course in Newport, South Wales he worked for far-left publications specializing in work on anti-racist activities and fascist groups, in particular the British National Party. In 1994 he gave up photojournalism in favor of landscape photography.

His book “For Most Of It I Have No Words” about the landscapes of the places that have seen Genocide was published in 1998 to wide approval including praise from the novelist Anne Michaels and Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The piece was exhibited around the UK including the Imperial War Museum as an Impressions Gallery (York) touring show and in Europe including the influential Nederlands Foto Institut. The work is now a British Council Touring Exhibition traveling to venues as far removed as the Holocaust Museum in Houston and Photosynkyria (Thessaloniki). His piece “Long time, No see” about Native America was shown at Camerawork, San Francisco in 2001 and the current work from Afghanistan has been shown already at pARTs Gallery Minneapolis, The Griffin Center for Photography in Boston and Galerie Martin Kudlek (Cologne). A raft of exhibitions of the work from Afghanistan called ‘time|bomb’ will take place in September at Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool); Side Gallery (Newcastle); Hereford Photography Festival; Trace Gallery (Weymouth); Photofusion Gallery (London); The British Council (London); the Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

His work is held by private collectors and in the collections of The Portland Art Museum, Oregon; the British Council and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Weismann Art Museum in Minneapolis.

In 2002, Simon won a Silver Award from the Association of Photographers and his Afghan work won the European Publishing Award meaning the book will appear as a book in September 2002 in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian language editions.

Top of Page