ARTIST STATEMENT

John Frederick Anderson is a diaspora of one. 

Born in Philadelphia U.S.A. he had lived on four continents by the time he was 15 years old. 

Constantly relocating not only developed his cultural curiosity, it also gave him the necessary tools to decode cultures and deconstruct human behaviour. 

Through his artistic practice  and academic investigation, John Frederick Anderson combines the two creative disciplines of photography and philosophy to make work that examines visual culture in society through incisive, critical observation and multi-disciplinary investigations of time and identity. 

His vision is to reunite the world through the power of visual imagery and storytelling, giving clarity where there is confusion and inspiring his audience to actively initiate the changes we need to make for future generations.

After two decades as a commercial designer and photographer in Australia and the UK, he turned away from comercial work in 2000 completing a MA in Documentary Photography in Newport, Wales. 

His final project, reveal, was shown at the Watershed Gallery in Bristol over six months, accompanied by an Arts Council England grant to design a corresponding website that was live for nearly twenty years. The project was featured in Blueprint and Decode magazines at the time.

John Frederick Anderson combines his three post graduate degrees in Semiotics with his artistic practice, backed by two decades of lecturing and exhibiting work. His solo exhibition Grid Cities- Pombaline at the Centro Português de Fotografia, was shown over six months in 2018/9 and received over 40,000 visitors. He has designed and published three books about his ongoing project on grid designed cities, and is currently studying a PhD in Semiotics at the University of Oviedo. 

John Frederick Anderson lives and works in Gijón, Asturias in northern Spain.  

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