Odette England is an Australian-British photographer whose artwork has been exhibited internationally. She often uses family photographs in her practice. England's work is held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the George Eastman Museum, where she exhibited in 'Of Time and Buildings' with John Divola and Lori Nix. In 2012, England won the CENTER $5,000 Project Launch Award. Of England's work, the juror, Virginia Heckert, Curator and Department Head of Photographs at The J. Paul Getty Museum wrote, "I kept returning to Odette England's 'Thrice Upon a Time' for the story it tells about the loss of a family farm, and Ms. England's poignant effort to reclaim that loss by engaging her parents in the performative act of attaching negatives of the farm that she had taken previously to the soles of their shoes as they return to the site on a regular basis and walk the land that they once owned. The images derived from the battered and frayed negatives make tangible the anguish and grief the photographer wishes to convey". In 2015, she was a finalist for the Australian Photo Book of the Year Award for her monograph Lover of Home.. The book included images from 'Thrice Upon A Time'. In speaking about the work in an exhibition as part of the South Australian Living Artist Festival of 2015, Flinders University Art Museum and City Gallery director Fiona Salmon said that revisiting the property for the project brought mixed responses from England's parents: "She said that her mother was quite open and up for it, whereas her dad was quite upset by the process and found it very difficult to talk about the pictures". England is an assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is the director/curator of the Winter Garden Photograph project. The Winter Garden photograph project marks the 40th anniversary of the book 'Camera Lucida' by Roland Barthes in 2020. The project comprises two parts. The first is a 344-page edited volume of photographs and texts titled 'Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph'. England invited more than 200 photography-based artists, writers, critics, curators, and historians from around the world to contribute an image or text that reflects on Barthes’ unpublished snapshot of his mother. Essayists include Douglas Nickel, Andrea V. Rosenthal Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University; Lucy Gallun, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art; and Phillip Prodger, Senior Research Scholar, Yale Center for British Art. Foreword by Charlotte Cotton, independent curator and writer. 'Keeper of the Hearth' will be England’s first edited volume, published by Schilt Publishing
