Lottie Davies was born in Guildford, UK, in 1971. She grew up in Surrey and was educated in Alton and Godalming. After a degree in philosophy at St Andrews University in Scotland, she moved back to England to pursue a career in photography. She is currently based in Cornwall in the south west of England.

Lotties’ unique style has been employed in a variety of contexts, including newspapers, glossy magazines, books and advertising. In recent years she has developed her practice to employ moving image, audio, text and interactive installation. This mixed media approach is crystallised in her long-term project Quinn (2014-2020).  Her work has garnered international acclaim with the image Quints, which won First Prize at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Awards 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with Viola As Twins, which won the Photographic Art Award, Arte Laguna Prize in Venice in 2011, and her collaboration on Dreams of Your Life with Hide & Seek/Film 4.0 which was BAFTA-nominated in 2012.

Lottie’s work is concerned with stories and personal histories, the tales and myths we use to structure our lives. She takes inspiration from classical and modern painting, cinema and theatre as well as the imaginary worlds of literature. She employs a deliberate reworking of our visual vocabulary, playing on our notions of nostalgia and visual conventions with the intention of evoking a sense of recognition and narrative. Sandy Nairne, former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, described Davies’ work as “brilliantly imaginative”.

On episode 156, Lottie discusses, among other things:

• Her relocation from London to Cornwall

• current project, Quinn

• Why she sets her work in the past

• The benefits of using an actor to represent her character, Quinn

• How to acquire a baby for a shoot

• Why her mother was born in a bucket

• On photographers not being considered artists

• Her column for Professional Photographer

• ‘Photobook Fails’

• The six phases of the creative process

• The Empathy Museum portraits

• Memories and Nightmares

  
  Referenced:

• Laura Noble

• Samuel J Weir

• Forest School Camps

• Matt Harris

• Gordon MacDonald

• Craig Easton

• Dean Pavitt

• Paul Samson

• Gary Rhodes

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