Jamie Hawkesworth made his debut with portraits of people passing through Preston’s brutalist bus station (published first as a pamphlet, Preston Is My Paris, in 2010, and later a book, Preston Bus Station, in 2015). That early work catapulted Hawkesworth into the fashion world, where he continues to shoot campaigns for global brands. The body of work that makes up The British Isles, his current solo exhibition, seems to pick up where Preston Bus Station left off, offering enigmatic and elusive vignettes of the nation.
A dozen large-scale prints hang at Huxley-Parlour. Though made over 13 years, between 2007 and 2020, it’s remarkable how little Hawkesworth’s style has deviated. He still favours the unusual closeup – perhaps a hangover from the year he spent photographing reconstructed crime scenes before trading in a forensic science degree for photography. There are two such pictures here: the camera closing in on the face of a woman bathed in sunlight, eyes closed behind tinted glasses, skin puckered by fine lines; and an unusual crop of a man’s face caught in profile, which gives only clues – the torn collar of his shirt, a few dots of paint on a faded baseball cap. His lips are stretched into a half smile, making the texture of recently shorn facial hair catch in the light.
