Jack Owen

Making work together

Much of the work on this website is collaborative, in the sense that the process behind the work is about coming together and exploring a given topic in as equal a way as possible. I love to work this way. It often feels to me like the only way to work.

Photography has a troubled past, intertwined as it is with empire, colonialism and entrenched power structures. Yet if we democratise the making, and open it up to everyone, it feels possible to flip this dynamic and make work that offers an alternative, and enables a process of challenge and exploration. There is meaningful politics in such work, and much hope for better days to come.

What does this look like in practice? Collaboration can mean different things to different people, but for me it is about relationships, skills transfer and energy. Knowledge, for example about how to operate equipment, the work of other artists, or a sense of the history of community photography can transform a group’s way of thinking about what is possible, opening up new ways of seeing and thinking about our experiences, and ways of expression that were not on the table before. Bringing such thinking into a safe, kind and welcoming space in which people feel heard and appreciated allows ideas to flourish and creativity to blossom.

Over the last decade or more I’ve been experimenting and working on many such creative projects, work that has taken me to Palestine to work with young women studying particle physics, to inner city London and a project with neurodivergent young people and Hackney Museum, to a Doncaster hotel and a group of young Afghan refugees, to the Dearne Valley and a farming community tilling the land above the South Yorkshire coalfield and many other projects besides.

Currently (March 2025) I’m working on a collaborative photography project in the Gleadless Valley in Sheffield with Heeley Trust, delivering a series of photography and zine making workshops for the deaf community with Voz Theatre, and gearing up for a project with Sheffield One World Choir.

Do reach out to chat if this work interests you.