Sidney Bendall

Sidney Bendall began her journey into the documentation of the bleak side of life and death in the North of England in her first year of university. When researching into the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who terrorised northern towns and cities in the 70’s, Sidney photographed over 20 locations he had murdered and dumped his victims. This is where the fusion of crime documentary and landscape photography in her work began.

Sidney’s images feature photographs of mundane locations we may pass everyday, they are transformed from ordinary images to create dark, haunting narratives within the frame to convey the horrendous events that took place.

Her work highlights the violent representation of women within society. She aims to distort this grim objectification and brutalisation we see in the media each day and bring justice to the individual victims of violent crimes instead of them just being remembered as “The victims of the killer”.

In a more recent series of images entitled “26 Public Houses” Sidney actually portrays the locations as the victims through photographing several pubs that have been shut due to the Corona Virus lockdown.