Laura Pannack is a London based Photographer. She was educated at the University of Brighton Central Saint Martins College of Art and LCC. Her work has been extensively exhibited and published both in the UK and internationally, including at The National Portrait Gallery, The Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the Royal Festival Hall in London.
In 2010 Laura received first prize in the Portrait Singles category of the World Press Photo awards. She has also won and been shortlisted for several other awards including The Sony World Photography Awards, The Magenta foundation and Lucies IPA. She was awarded the Vic Odden by The Royal Photographic Society award for a notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer aged 35 or under. She was a judge for the 2015 World Press Photo awards and divides her time between teaching, completing assignments and working on her personal projects Her art focuses on social documentary and portraiture, and seeks to explore the complex relationship between subject and photographer.
The overarching argument is a common but affirming one: life outside of linear time, and thus agelessness, is impossible. And if there is to be any remote possibility, it is only a form of momentary independence that is offered before the inevitable occurs – meeting one’s death like any mortal. This project is a response to her need to escape, adventure and roam in reaction to internal pressure she feels that time is moving too fast. It seems like a shared experience that hours, days and weeks pass and we can’t recall them, life continues and time slips away.
Pannack's adventure began in Romania. The strong sense of Eastern Europe timelessness, tradition and untouched scenery mirrored my desire to stop time. Alternating between reality and fantasy, the photographs react a certain separation from the modern world, where rural traditions remain intact and life appears to be marked by ritual. Like a web of nostalgia and resistance, all the signs of temporality come to bear in objects that are charged with tensions of permanence and impermanence. Time elsewhere is relentless but here something of it is left behind.
