Homer
Sykes (born 1949) is a Canadian-born British photographer whose
career has included personal projects and landscape photography.
Life
and career
Sykes's
father, Homer Warwick Sykes, was a Canadian-born American of English
extraction who worked for the China National Aviation Corporation in
Shanghai; his mother, Helen Grimmitt, was Canadian born and raised in
Hong Kong. The couple were married in August 1947, but in June 1948,
in an early stage of his wife's pregnancy, Homer was killed in an
accident at Lunghua airfield. Helen returned to her family home in
Vancouver, and the son was born three weeks later.
When
the boy's mother remarried in 1954, the family moved to England. He
was a keen photographer as a teenager, with a darkroom both at home
and at boarding school. In 1968 he started a three-year course at the
London College of Printing (LCP), while sharing a house in St John's
Wood. In the summer vacation during his first year, he went to New
York, and was impressed by the work of current photographers —
Cartier-Bresson, Davidson, Friedlander, Frank, Uzzle and Winogrand —
that he saw at the Museum of Modern Art.
While
wondering about a new photographic project, Sykes serendipitously
came across a story on the Britannia Coconut Dancers in an issue of
In Britain magazine. This led him to research other local festivals
in Britain at the archives of the Cecil Sharp House. Sykes'
photography of these festivals was inspired by that of Benjamin
Stone, but he approached them with a modern sensibility and a
small-format camera, "[trying] to include the unintended
participants and to document the unfolding drama in a contemporary
urban environment". The results were shown in exhibitions, where
they were praised by Colin MacInnes, and also in the book Once a
Year: Some Traditional British Customs. In this book (published by
Gordon Fraser, uniform with Patrick Ward's Wish You Were Here), Sykes
presents one or more photographs of and a detailed explanatory text
for each of 81 customs — for example three photographs (on
pp. 105–108) of the annual auction on the first Monday
following St Peter's day (29 June) at the Grapes Inn of the mowing
and grazing rights to Yarnton Meadow (or Yarnton West Mead), Yarnton
(Oxfordshire). Once a Year has been described as "a beautifully
photographed, tender and often humorous document"; and, 32 years
after its publication, as remaining "[p]robably the best study
of English folklore and ritual". Annie-Laure Wanaverbecq of
Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau writes that "Observing
his countrymen with humour and curiosity, over several years [Sykes]
produced a fabulous visual archive of a nation in crisis and beset by
doubt."
Sykes
went on to photograph the glam rock, punk, new wave and other
music/fashion scenes of Britain.
Michaël
Houlette of Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau writes:
The
combination of several people in the same frame characterizes most of
the photographs by Homer Sykes selected for [an exhibition of his
work of the 1970s]. Often the structure of his images rests on two or
three main figures who stand out and reveal themselves by an
expression or attitude. There is no overly obvious direction or
composition, just a keen observation and a systematic method of
shooting: a short focal length, some preliminary observation and a
certain English manner, frank and courteous, to come in contact with
people that he sometimes photographs at very close range
(surprisingly, they also seem to ignore the photographer who is at
work). Present at the event, invisible in the image, Homer Sykes made
discretion a real trademark. And if it's evidence of knowing how to
see, it's the relinquishment of the frame to those he photographs:
"My pictures are about people, what they wear, how they look,
how they interact with each other, against a background that sets the
scene. They are not about me".
After
absorbing advice from David Hurn, then a part-time lecturer at LCP
who was living nearby, as well as other photographers that he met
through Hurn, Sykes moved on to photographing news stories for the
Weekend Telegraph, Observer, Sunday Times, Newsweek, Now, Time, and
New Society. He worked with various agencies including Viva, and from
1989 to 2005 was with Network Photographers.
Sykes
also photographed the British landscape for various books published
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, but found time for his own projects:
Hunting with Hounds, "a closely observed documentation of
another set of rituals that define a dimension of the English way of
life", and On the Road Again, photographs of four North American
road trips taken over three decades.
When
the Grimstone Foundation invited Sykes to photograph Shanghai, the
city of his conception, he jumped at the opportunity. A high point
for the photographer was his discovery that the building on Jiang Xi
Lu where his parents lived still existed, as the Fu Zhou building.
Sykes's collection was exhibited and published as Shanghai Odyssey.
Sykes
has taught in the master's course in Photojournalism and Documentary
Photography at the London College of Communication.
In
2014, Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau (Gentilly, Paris)
holds a major exhibition of Sykes' work from the 1970s.
