Michelle Sank was born into an immigrant Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa in 1953. Leaving apartheid South Africa in 1978 after her initial art training, and moving to England in 1987, she subsequently received an MA in Photography at De Montford University, Leicester in 2000. Based in Exeter, since 1987, Sank's photographs have been exhibited widely, and mainly explore identity, gender, age, and social and cultural diversity in the UK.
Photographer and University Lecturer, Michelle Sank was born into an immigrant Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa in 1953. In the early 1970s, Sank obtained a BA in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town where, having initially focused on painting and sculpture, she was introduced to the medium of photography while completing a photography module. From then on, Sank claims, photography became ‘an umbilical cord connecting me to the worlds I inhabited’ (Foster, 2021). At this time she also met and was inspired by South African photographer, David Goldblatt, known for his anti-apartheid documentary work. Having left apartheid South Africa in 1978, Sank moved to England in 1987, where she subsequently obtained an MA in Photography at De Montford University, Leicester in 2000. In this period, she encountered the works of many other photographers who inspired her practice, including American photographers such as Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca di-Corcia and Alec Soth. Taking time to settle into the UK, Sank began exhibiting her photographs in 2001, holding a solo exhibition at Image Gallery, Bedford and contributing to group shows, including the prestigious John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London; The Workstation, Sheffield; and Immediate 2 at Site Gallery, Sheffield (all 2001). In these early works, Sank’s photographs were already exploring the issues around social and cultural diversity that would occupy her later interest, contributing to her receiving the first Visual Arts Award from Arts Council England in 2002 (awarded again in 2004, 2006 and 2015).
Reflecting a preoccupation with the human condition and aspects of British identity and culture, Sank’s photographs can be viewed as social documentaries; this is particularly evident in her series of images, whether self-initiated or commissioned by galleries in the UK, Europe and the USA. These include: Into the Arms of Babes (2011), reflecting on teenage parents in the UK; Teenagers Belfast (2005), a study of young people across the political divide in Belfast; and Young Carers (2004), a portrayal of children under the age of 18 who were the main carers for their parent/s). Her first monograph, Becoming (2006), is a collection of youth portraits from different bodies of work spanning five years, accompanied by an essay by David Goldblatt. Becoming signalled the beginnings of Sank’s rise to national and international repute; the following year she presented another solo show and accompanying monograph, The Water’s Edge at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. Sank’s project explored women who work, or worked in and around the city’s waterfront, or who had departed from there to work at sea, accompanied by an oral archive of their stories, created by art historian Dr Joanne Lacey. The same year, Sank won third prize in the Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2010, Sank won the Single Image Award at the British Journal of Photography’s International Photographic Awards, and in 2011 she released her third monograph, The Submerged, looking at the landscape and its inhabitants in the coastal areas of North Wales. Her fourth monograph My.Self, commissioned by Multistory, was published in 2018, exploring the diversity and aspirations of young people living in the Black Country.
Sank's later national and international exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Guernsey Photography Festival (2014), Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter (2015 and 2021), North: Fashioning Identity, held at the East Wing Galleries, Somerset House, London (2017-2018), and the Pingyao Photographic Festival in China (2021). She also contributed to the touring exhibition Project Sixteen (2019), which addressed themes of youth, class and gender, exploring what it means to be this age in the UK; 209 Women at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, which documented female MPs; and Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, alongside 12 other photographers (including South African born Jillian Edelstein), which captured the special connection between Holocaust survivors and the younger generations of their families, and which was shown at The Imperial War Museum, London in 2021. In 2020 Sank was a winner in The British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain award, and received an Honorable Mention, 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers; in 2021 she was a prizewinner in The Portfolio Review Portrait Competition. Sank has also held residencies at The Photographers' Gallery (2010) and the Wellcome Collection, London (2020).
Michelle Sank has lived in Exeter since 1987. Her works can be found in UK public collections including the Open Eye Gallery Archive, Liverpool; Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter; Societe Jersiase, Jersey, and Guernsey Museum, Channel Islands. She continues to teach in a freelance capacity on the online MA Photography course, Falmouth University, Cornwall.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Michelle Sank]
Publications related to [Michelle Sank] in the Ben Uri Library