Liza Dracup is an established photographer and senior academic based in the north of England. Her experimental methodologies continue to underpin her photographic practice and academic research. This approach has led to various commissions, exhibitions and publications. She successfully completed a doctorate on Photographic strategies for visualising the landscape and natural history of Northern England: the ordinary and the extraordinary (2017). Her work continues to question how photography made in response to specific landscapes and natural histories can operate within the field of landscape aesthetics. Aligning with wider cultural debates about the value of the ‘local’ from an environmental and personal perspective. Her research tests out strategies that capitalise on the transformational qualities of photography. Her approach utilises various photographic modes of making. She engages with experimental photographic strategies, which present us with paradoxes that extend beyond human vision. Her photographs place emphasis on the extraordinary properties of the ordinary and reveal hidden or unseen aspects, leading to a more informed, comprehensive and enriched idea of the northern landscape and its natural history. Her wider research loop crosses professional and academic contexts, and extends to re-positioning a wide range of historical collections-based research material across photographic, artistic and science disciplines. This research trajectory continues an on-going photographic examination of the broader cultural value of the ordinary and the local. Her work has been recognised through international award nominations for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2012) and the Prix Pictet (2009).​

 

Photo: Field Work (2017) Impressions Gallery, UK.​