Richard Pickup

I am first and foremost a teacher of photography, and have a 'day job' doing just this. It was not always thus; I have for a long time taught art and photography history and theory to a wide range of students, both in further and higher education. My degree is in Fine Art and I have an MA in The Social History of Art. I began shooting film probably before my teens but was taught formally at art college before my degree. Things got more serious on the degree, Nottingham Trent University had a fine, very accessible darkroom, of which I made liberal, largely autodidactic use. I hit the streets quite obsessively after my MA, with a chunky plastic Nikon and a slightly upgraded kit lens shooting street scenes on P mode. I took a lot of images of Birmingham, London and Paris.

In recent years my teaching has taken me back to the darkroom and I have been privileged to introduce a lot of art students to the pleasures of photography in its many forms. I have acquired a specialist knowledge in print production, both film based and digital; too many darkroom hours to count leading to a passionate appreciation of the photo as a 'thing' that you hold in your hand.