Description
Marc Davenant’s Rebellion! project
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion” Oscar Wilde
Rebellion! is a social documentary photography project which explores protest as an essential part of the cultural identity of Great Britain. The project includes photographs and testimony from protesters as well as from those who may have been targeted by the protests. It explores the social issues around protest, such as the fracturing of social cohesion in blighted post-industrial communities, which fuel dissatisfaction with the status quo. The project has been developed in part as a response to the introduction of draconian anti-protest legislation by successive governments.
The project includes photos taken over a twelve year period and has now been turned into a touring exhibition. This high quality zine, featuring two of his winning photos from the Portrait of Britain competition, has been produced to accompany the exhibition.
The zine includes the poem ‘The Voices Raised’ by Ian McMillan which was commissioned for the project, along with images of a wide range of protests and accompanying narrative.
56 pages with 55 photographs
Size 21 x 15cm
Edward Philips –
Marc is an excellent photographer combining an artist’s eye with a generous, socially-conscious heart. This is an important and much needed document in dark times such as these, arguing that any democracy worth its salt needs dissent, protest and dialogue in order to thrive and grow. These images of ordinary people with extraordinary voices will stay with you long after you close the book. Highly recommended. Buy it, you will not be disappointed.
Emily Randall –
Is protest of any use? Even the swell of a million people in the streets seems ephemeral the day after. The wealthy still get wealthier. Livelihoods are lost. Laws continue to sap the power of the many and suppress the marginalised. Climate continues to deteriorate.
Glancing through the pages of Rebellion!, my answer is yes. Protest matters. Protest reminds us that we are human. That we have rights and demand that they be respected. That we are not alone. These superb photographs, with measured prose and poetry, capture unflinchingly the power of protest as art, and art as protest. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I thank Marc Davenant for his dedication to chronicling these times without a mote of sentimentality or condescension. Highly recommended.
Bob Fry –
Marc Davenant is a photographer with integrity, a social conscience and a desire to use his work to highlight social injustice. The Rebellion zine is full of photographs that will stay with you long after you close the book.
Photographs taken by a politically informed artist with a job to do. The people in his photographs are always collaborators & never subjects for exploitation. A lesson that I wish “photographers” would learn. Buy it. Just buy it.