Dr Keith W Roberts

Keith W Roberts is a lecturer in photography, teaching both practice and theory-based components of the BA (Hons) Photography programme. His practice was initially concerned with editorial work for publications such as FACE and ID Magazine and was mostly portraiture based, focusing upon fashion and youth culture. In more recent years, he has established a more interdisciplinary practice, which can be considered an intersection between curatorial, archival and photographic.

His research is concerned with archival intervention specifically and the classification of photographic typology within portraiture. This has led to the mapping of a large archive of commercial photographic portrait negatives taken in Liverpool between 1920 to 1960, and their subsequent shift in status as they move from anonymous and hidden, to public and named. The practice of intervening within this archive has utilised databases in order to interrogate large datasets and social media platforms as a means of display strategy, including use of the self-published artist’s book.

The work has resulted in several site-specific location-based installations within the North West of England over the past couple of years, culminating in the completion of his PhD in 2018.