Crispin Hughes - Ocean Rebellion
Salmon performers from Ocean Rebellion, beached on the banks of the Thames, prepare a protest against fish farming and the industrial fishing which supports it.
Salmon performers from Ocean Rebellion beached in front of the Marine Stewardship Council's Annual Awards dinner at the Fishmongers’ Hall on the banks of the polluted River Thames in the City of London. Ocean Rebellion said: “The world must reduce fishing by 80% – industrial fishers are now fishing to provide salmon farm fish food, this must end now, they are robbing the food from the mouths of local fishers. Sardine stocks off the coast of West Africa and krill stocks in Antarctica are drastically depleted because of the industrial hunger for wild fish food. This must stop before corporate greed creates more biodiversity collapse, starvation and unrest.”
Ocean Rebellion is an international grassroots art collective which tackles Ocean degradation and biodiversity loss by conceiving playful, emotive and spectacular ‘art bombs,’ https://oceanrebellion.earth/about/
Crispin Hughes was born in London in 1959. He studied English at Cambridge University and Photography at the University of Westminster. In 1983 he co-founded Photo Co-op / Photofusion, one of the country’s leading photography galleries and education centres.
In the 1990s he began working extensively across Africa as a photojournalist, covering conflicts in South Sudan, Rwanda, Angola and Somalia. He has worked for numerous aid agencies across Africa and Asia. He became a member of the picture agency Panos in 1990 and his work appears regularly in the national and international press.
Active consent is characteristic of his documentary photography of social issues, working with the people involved to make un-contrived but collaborative pictures.
Since 2005 he has collaborated with filmmaker Susi Arnott on a series of exhibitions about tidal spaces: Unquiet Thames at the Museum of London in Docklands examined urban, enclosed, tidal spaces along the Thames shoreline. The exhibition was one of Time Out’s twelve picks of the year. Stone Hole (2009 at Photofusion and Peninsula Arts) scrutinized the interiors of tidal sea caves. These large scale prints challenged conventions in art that link landscape with beauty and moral uplift.
Thames Tides (2016), a four-screen immersive projection using floating cameras, toured watery exhibition venues around London. Duck (2019 at The Bargehouse Gallery) continued the use of autonomous cameras to develop a random aesthetic concerned with anthropomorphism and point-of-view.
From 2007-2019 Crispin was the photo-educator for Through Positive Eyes, a collaborative photo-storytelling project by 130 people living with HIV and AIDS in 10 cities around the world.
Since 2019 he has been working extensively on climate and environmental issues in the UK. In 2024 his 1980s work was collected by the Martin Parr Foundation.
Crispin Hughes - Ocean Rebellion
Salmon performers from Ocean Rebellion, beached on the banks of the Thames, prepare a protest against fish farming and the industrial fishing which supports it.
Salmon performers from Ocean Rebellion beached in front of the Marine Stewardship Council's Annual Awards dinner at the Fishmongers’ Hall on the banks of the polluted River Thames in the City of London. Ocean Rebellion said: “The world must reduce fishing by 80% – industrial fishers are now fishing to provide salmon farm fish food, this must end now, they are robbing the food from the mouths of local fishers. Sardine stocks off the coast of West Africa and krill stocks in Antarctica are drastically depleted because of the industrial hunger for wild fish food. This must stop before corporate greed creates more biodiversity collapse, starvation and unrest.”
Ocean Rebellion is an international grassroots art collective which tackles Ocean degradation and biodiversity loss by conceiving playful, emotive and spectacular ‘art bombs,’ https://oceanrebellion.earth/about/
Crispin Hughes was born in London in 1959. He studied English at Cambridge University and Photography at the University of Westminster. In 1983 he co-founded Photo Co-op / Photofusion, one of the country’s leading photography galleries and education centres.
In the 1990s he began working extensively across Africa as a photojournalist, covering conflicts in South Sudan, Rwanda, Angola and Somalia. He has worked for numerous aid agencies across Africa and Asia. He became a member of the picture agency Panos in 1990 and his work appears regularly in the national and international press.
Active consent is characteristic of his documentary photography of social issues, working with the people involved to make un-contrived but collaborative pictures.
Since 2005 he has collaborated with filmmaker Susi Arnott on a series of exhibitions about tidal spaces: Unquiet Thames at the Museum of London in Docklands examined urban, enclosed, tidal spaces along the Thames shoreline. The exhibition was one of Time Out’s twelve picks of the year. Stone Hole (2009 at Photofusion and Peninsula Arts) scrutinized the interiors of tidal sea caves. These large scale prints challenged conventions in art that link landscape with beauty and moral uplift.
Thames Tides (2016), a four-screen immersive projection using floating cameras, toured watery exhibition venues around London. Duck (2019 at The Bargehouse Gallery) continued the use of autonomous cameras to develop a random aesthetic concerned with anthropomorphism and point-of-view.
From 2007-2019 Crispin was the photo-educator for Through Positive Eyes, a collaborative photo-storytelling project by 130 people living with HIV and AIDS in 10 cities around the world.
Since 2019 he has been working extensively on climate and environmental issues in the UK. In 2024 his 1980s work was collected by the Martin Parr Foundation.