Education
Born in London, Friend studied English at the University of York, and Photography at the University of Westminster and the London College of Printing.
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Melanie Friend
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As a freelance photojournalist in the 1980s, she reported for broadcast and print media such as the World Service, British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist, and the Financial Times. From the mid 1990s she shifted her focus to longer-term photographic projects, producing work for exhibitions and books Her book and exhibition Border Country documents the experiences of asylum seekers detained at the United Kingdom"s Immigration Removal Centres.
Friend is known for using the tension between stark images and sound to document conflict.
Of Border Country, she writes: "The voices provide an emotional counterpoint to the formal images of the institutions... listener/viewer to reflect both on the experience of the immigration system itself and on the wider concepts of migration and borders." Will the bruises still show? in: "Signals: festival of women photographers" Interchange Studios, London, 1994. A Documentary Photographer’s strategies of representation in Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible (1996).
Claustrophobia. In: Claustrophobia. Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1998.
John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award.
In: "John Kobal photographic portrait award 2000". National Portrait Gallery, London. Number Place Like Home: Echoes of Kosovo (2001), a chapter in Representations of War, Migration and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives published by Routledge, New York, 2014 eds.
Christiane Schlote (University of Zurich, Switzerland) & Daniel Rellstab (University of Vaasa, Finland).
Friend, M (2010) Representing Immigration Detainees: The Juxtaposition of Image and Sound in Border Country, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Volume. 11, Number. 2, May.
Achievements
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Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast, 16 November 2007 – 11 January 2008. European Central Bank Europe Photographic Award 2008: finalists’ show Cologne and Frankfurt. Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto (Canada) 10 September – 16 October 2010. 2013: Images from The Home Front series in group show at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Artist 2013 / 2014: The Home Front, Impressions Gallery, 2013 and toured to DLI Museum and Art Gallery, Durham, 2014. Forthcoming: The Home Front An Impressions Gallery touring exhibition, curated by Pippa Oldfield at University of Hertfordshire Galleries, 14 November 2014 – 31 January 2015 www.herts.ac.uk/artsandgalleries.
