“My work captures an awkwardness, but it’s also a celebration of some kind of beauty or empowerment.”—Michelle Sank
Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa and has been living in England since 1987. Centring her work around topics of socio-economic diversity and growing up, Sank’s thoughtful images explore the pressures and hopes of young people in suburban and coastal towns.
Growing up during Apartheid in an immigrant community, Sank feels an affinity with the experience of growing in a society from the peripheries. Praised by mentor David Goldblatt for finding the sensational in the everyday, Sank’s gaze is highly inquisitive and non-judgemental. Identifying with the alienation which results from a dislocated sense of belonging, Sank describes her portraiture as a form of social documentary, seeking to empower her subjects through their experience of the sitting process.
Sometimes requesting to take a person’s portrait on impulse, Sank is fascinated by how people respond to the opportunity of being photographed. ‘I’m drawn to those on the edge of society’ Sank writes, ‘people who are there but don’t quite fit in.’ Engaging with experiences of transness, body dysmorphia, and surgery in her series In My Skin, Sank explores the measures taken for young people to feel comfortable in their bodies. Within these images, Sank investigates ideas of conventional beauty, celebrating and upholding the fragility and resilience shown in her subjects and their environments.
Sank’s third monograph The Submerged, published in 2011, documents the relationship between people and place in the hilly and coastal areas around Aberystwyth, Wales. Drawn towards the grittiness of the landscape, The Submerged looks at the way our homes affect and shape us. The series Insula, similarly explores the strong connection between people and place, depicting residents of Jersey against the backdrop of their daily lives.
Sank has exhibited and published internationally, including the USA. Finland, Belgium, Germany, Canada, The Channel Islands, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong and The Netherlands. In 2020, Sank was awarded the prize for the category ‘Portrait of Britain’ by the British Journal of Photography.
