Stephen Clarke is an artist and writer. He is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the University of Chester.

Clarke’s work responds to his experience of place. His subjects are the places where he has lived, as well as tourist sites; especially the British seaside. Although his work is predominantly photographic, he also uses collage, drawing and print. He has an interest in print material: magazines, postcards, guide books, and ephemera.

Clarke has published photobooks with Café Royal Books, The Velvet Cell, Out of Place Books, and Fistful of Books. These zines draw upon his extensive archive of photographic projects that span over forty years. His projects date from his undergraduate course at Newport College of Art in South Wales (1983–1986) where he was taught by Keith Arnatt and Ian Walker, and mentored by Ron McCormick. This formative period in the 1980s grounded his approach to documenting place and led to an interest in the American New Topographics photographers.

On completing his B.A. in Fine Art at Newport, he spent time photographing San Diego, California. This one-year residency provided direct experience of the landscape documented by the New Topographics photographers, and confirmed his own methods of working. Whilst there he made contact with a number of important artists, notably John Baldessari who became the subject of Clarke’s first M.A. Dissertation, titled Visibly Invisible: John Baldessari (unpublished, 1996).

Clarke’s interest in collage also dates back to his studies at Newport. From the mid-1980s, he has made unique collages that explore the use of transparent adhesive sticky tape. This process allowed Clarke to pull images, text and colours from magazines to produce painterly artworks. The combination of his interest in photography and collage led him to a postgraduate course in M.A. Fine Art Printmaking, and ongoing collaborations with the printmaker David Ferry.

Stephen Clarke has written many articles about photography and art for print and online publications. An examination of the work of other artists underpins his own interests. Recently, this part of his practice has coincided with an engagement in curating exhibitions.