Ander Gunn

Seven Decades

August 27 2022 – February 25 2023.

Photographer Ander Gunn has spent a lifetime turning his lens to the world, from the brightest lights of the St Ives School to a working class Londoner framed in the doorway of a red-brick public convenience.

Entirely self-taught, Ander was a keen student of Ansel Adams’ and Fred Archer’s black and white photography techniques, learning from library books and through experience.

This exhibition of black and white images ref lects his output over the last 70 years, offering a small sample of portrait, rural and street photography. Alongside kinetic captures of waves crashing into Cornish cliffs and portraits of internationally acclaimed artists and intellectuals are more intimate moments; glimpses of Gunn’s life as a husband and father and his personal darkroom ephemera.

“Wherever we lived, Ander would put together a darkroom. He would disappear for hours into these cave-like spaces with the smell of developing chemicals, the sound of a radio, the red glow of a safe light, enlargers, developing trays and the ticking of timers. Watching my father at work felt like being with a magician conjuring up images that f loated into life. Time always seemed to melt away. It was a very magical experience.

“To wash his photographs Ander had to use the bath; large prints of people, landscapes and seascapes floated as we cleaned our teeth. I’d often see people that I recognised locally – Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron, a tin miner, a farmer with his cattle. Other familiar faces included writers and artists such as Tom Stoppard, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Rhys, Karl Weshke, Brenda Wooton and my uncle the poet Thom Gunn – Ander’s brother.”

– Charlotte Gunn, 2022.

Ander Gunn: Seven Decades  – Solo Exhibition
August 27 2022 – February 25 2023.
Jackson Foundation
North Row, St Just,
Cornwall, TR19 7LB.

Please check here for opening times.