Margaret Salmon

Born in 1975 in New York, she lives in Harrogate (Great Britain). 

Margaret Salmon is the first winner of the new Max Mara Prize, an award handed out in association with the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and earmarked for young women artists working in Great Britain. Acclaimed in particular by Gillian Wearing, the work of this American-born filmmaker is fuelled by references to the great realist tradition in film, be it the propaganda documentary of the Farm Security Administration in the United States, Italian Neo-Realism, or French cinéma vérité.

Like the pioneers of the artist's film, Salmon works on her own, shooting in 16mm or in Super 8. Her subjects are taken from everyday life: people with modest incomes, often close to her, showing their at once ordinary and dramatic lives. Salmon is particularly sensitive to interactions between the soundtrack and the image, which she use to produce disturbing effects that heighten the documentary sobriety of her films with a lyrical dimension. Her work is shown in the Espace écureuil.