Peter Watkins, MA
Associate Lecturer
Peter is an artist and photographer and teaches for the Fine Art Experimental Media programme.
His long-term autobiographical work explores themes of loss, trauma, and history, meditating on the processes of archiving and remembering. He explores how personal histories are preserved or lost through memorialization.
Peter has exhibited internationally, most notably with his project The Unforgetting, and more recently with Mother Tongue, first shown at Galerie NoD in Prague in 2022. He also teaches Photography at FAMU, and is a frequent guest speaker at several UK universities.
Peter’s work has been featured in The Guardian, Photoworks Magazine, Paper Journal, and The British Journal of Photography, among others. In 2018, he won the Guernsey International Photography Award, and in 2019, his book The Unforgetting, received the Skinnerboox Award, launching at Polycopies during Paris Photo that same year. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum Winterthur in Switzerland.
To see more of his work visit peterwatkins.co.uk
Education
Royal College of Art, GB — Master of Arts
University of Westminster, GB — Bachelor of Arts
Professional Activities
2021 - present — FAMU, Lecturer
Research & Creative Practice
Selected Works:
2022: Mother Tongue
2022: Paradise Gardens
2015-2017: Boarderlands
2011-2019: The Unforgiving
2012: Surface Tension
2011: Index of Time
Press:
Sense memory: Peter Watkins’s ghostly reflection on grief and loss, Sean O’Hagan for The Guardian.
American Suburb X. The Impossible Science of a Unique Human Being, by Eugenie Shinkle
Photoworks. The Unforgetting: a conversation between Peter Watkins and Oliver Shamlou.
British Journal of Photography
The Unforgetting at the Webber Gallery
Paper Journal. The Unforgetting.
C-41 Magazine. Peter Watkins delves into his family history in depth.
Der Greif, Peter Watkins’ “The Unforgetting” featured by Zak Dimitrov.
Essays:
Unforgetting: Peter Watkins's austerely tender photographs, by Prof. Carol Mavor.
Mother Tongue, by Eugenie Shinkle.
My Life in Things, Unforgotten, by Ruth Rosenbach.
Interview with Pauline Rowe
