Richard's Art Noticeboard: Hannah Starkey: In Real Life - The Hepworth Wakefield (

Untitled, May 2022

Hannah Starkey: In Real Life is at The Hepworth Wakefield until 30 April 2023

A young woman with flaming red hair, resplendent in pink and turquoise, strides in pink platform boots down a Belfast street; a lowering sky threatens but renders the light dramatic and beautiful. The woman – girl – is at once negotiating the transitions into adulthood and through an urban environment that is explicitly coded male – not least in the prominent UDA mural signifying a time of struggle and violence from before she was born. This striking image – it measures 1.2 x 1.6m – is a celebration of female identity and independence. As Starkey says in a video accompanying the exhibition: “It’s really important to me that women are free to choose without judgement… I don’t care what you want to be as a woman, I don’t care how you want to dress, as long as you have your own agency and authenticity.”

The female experience is Hannah Starkey’s subject, and in particular its relationship with, and subjection to, visual representation. “I have learned a lot about how I’m expected to be in the world as a woman and then what the reality of being in the world as a woman is.” She goes on to explain that in using photography she is using a medium that “is always being used to shape women and to… sell them ideals… [Photography] has way more impact on our lives than I think we could ever begin to imagine.”

Starkey addresses this theme through the meticulous construction of images made in collaboration with her subjects. “I work with mis-en-scene, meaning that everything within the frame is carefully considered.” Starkey identifies locations and actors – often people she has met on the street, sometimes friends, sometimes professional actors. Lighting, costume and props are carefully choreographed. The results are like film stills: images that have an arresting, hyper-real quality: she is more concerned with “psychological truth than photographic truth”. And the pictures are beautiful: Starkey has an eye for composition and formal detail: she is especially good on reflections and colour.

This is Starkey’s first major retrospective and includes brand new work made in collaboration with local students. Wakefield’s tower blocks have never looked so good!

A wonderful show.