Ingrid Pollard was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1953 and moved to the UK as a child. She completed a BA (Hons) in Film & Video at the London College of Printing in 1985 and went on to do a Masters in Photographic Studies at Derby University in 1993.
Pollard’s work springs from an interest in filmmaking and cinema as much as from a fascination with the chemical and physical process of image-making: how the physical world is captured by the scientific process of alchemy. Her portrait photography and traditional landscape imagery questions social constructs such as Britishness and racial difference, for example in her photography series such as Pastoral Interlude (1987-1988), Seaside Series (1989) or Self-Evident (1995), in which she explores the presence of the black figure in the English landscape. Her book, Ingrid Pollard: Postcards Home, is centred on themes of space, place, cultural identity and imagined boundaries. Her work is also featured in the book Landscape Trauma: In the Age of Scopophilia. Both books are held at the Stuart Hall Library.
Pollard has exhibited in several group and solo shows internationally and her work forms part of collections including the Arts Council England, Bath and London South Bank Universities, the National Trust UK, the National Museum of Film, Photography and Video and the National Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. As part of her 2009 ‘Belonging in Britain’ exhibition, Iniva hosted a film screening of Belonging in Britain – Father’s Hands. The artist also presented her PhD project, The Im/Possibility of Photographing an Absence, at a Research Network event at the Stuart Hall Library in 2014. Pollard’s work was included in the exhibition ‘The Place is Here’ at South London Gallery (UK, 2017), alongside a public programme devised by Iniva. She has been involved in further explorative Study Days and projects hosted by Iniva.
Pollard lives and works in London as a photographer, printer, media artist and researcher and is a founding member of Autograph, the Association of Black British Photographers.