Stills from Life: Syd Shelton

Stills from Life opens with Syd Shelton’s dream of hope that the struggle and the fight for racial and class justice will prevail and it is the driving force dominating the last fifty years of his subjective photographic practice. From that time, he has never been anywhere without his camera bag in pursuit of what he calls the graphic argument.

Having studied fine art in Yorkshire Syd Shelton began his photographic practice in Australia in the early 1970s. In 1976, he returned to London and he established the design and photography partnership Red Wedge Graphics which evolved into the current agency ’Graphicsi’. Syd became one of the key activists in the movement Rock Against Racism. His work has been widely published and exhibited and is in numerous permanent collections including the V&A, The Tate Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, the Istrian Museum of Modern Art, Atlas Gallery and Autograph ABP.