Born - Summer 1969
First memory - Falling in a fish pond
Early ambition - To be Linda Carter as Wonder Woman.
First camera - On her 13th birthday, a Kodak instamatic (exact model unknown) given by her grand-parents.
Education - Various; five primary schools, one secondary school, one further education college and two art schools. Tanya has a BA (Hons) is Fine Art Photography from Glasgow School of Art.
Work - After moving South in 1997, Tanya learnt a whole range of computer skills in graphic design and web programming. With this newly learnt knowledge, she pursued freelance and contract work in and around London until the birth of her first baby in 2004.
Photography - Tanya works exclusively in colour, this is where her strength lies and anyway she loves colour, that soft pale yellow of sand and the postcard blue sky on a sunny day. She experiments more and more with using the surprise light from a flashgun, as well as, letting the slow ambient light from a low lit scene etch the film.
Tanya uses several cameras, she feels that each one adds to her visual voice; some slow her down, make her think, others are wonderfully quick and spontaneous. The common theme is always the capacity of colour and light to reveal the beauty in the most ordinary of things.
Now in 2011, all Tanya’s post-processing is digital but she still remains committed to using film, as she still enjoys having a nice pile of negatives to sift through.
Tanya Clarke, Brighton, UK