UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 14 JULY 2017
Our lecturers are more than just teaching staff, but practising professionals in their own right. Photography lecturer, Timm Sonnenschein, recently received national and regional TV and Radio coverage with his exhibitions in Belfast and Birmingham.
Timm has been working with Dr. Kieran Connell, lecturer in contemporary British history at Queen’s University Belfast and photographer Brian Homer, who originally developed the format of the 'Self-Portrait Project' in Birmingham in 1979.
Timm and two current photography students have worked on the self-portrait project with members of the public, both in Belfast and also in Bournville, Birmingham.
Timm originally became involved in the project in 2011, when the Library of Birmingham opened to the public for the first time. The archive, which is open to the public, is filled with 1000 of the self-portrait images.
“It’s a great way to fill the library with the diversity of the city,” he said.
Timm and his colleagues were then invited by the Bourneville Village Trust here in Birmingham to use the project as a way of helping them capture a visual representation of their residents, so they set up their cameras in five different locations, waited for the residents to appear and captured some amazing images!
Timm feels that working as an active practitioner in his field has a huge impact on his teachings;
"It’s important to keep practising because I need to keep my practice alive in order to be plugged in technically, conceptually and in my case, politically and of course, to keep up to date with contemporary photography developments."
Sammie Masters, a first year BA (Hons) Photography student who assisted Timm with this project told us: