“Partyka’s transient light effects in landscapes of wide open spaces and huge skies, with figures blending into their settings, elegiacally yet exhilaratingly explore ‘the ancient relationship between labour and earth’.”
Jackie Wullschlager: art critic, The Financial Times, London
“Justin Partyka’s photographs portray a way of rural life that is largely forgotten or unknown. As works of art these images move beyond the documentary to reveal his personal response to the landscape, people and places he has encountered.”
Sarah Bartholomew: curator, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
“Partyka’s work challenges our preconceptions and offers us a new slant on the familiar.”
Andrew Lambirth: writer and art reviewer
"A 'street photographer' who works in the fields, Partyka has developed - as Rilke says all true artists must - his own language, a photographic dialect, with which to catch the place and people he has worked so hard to come to know. Partyka's exceptional images do not peddle a soft pastoral vision of this landscape. You will see here no supine landscape romanticism of the Fens and their 'big skies'. No, his East Anglia is a tough place, a landscape of effort and toil."
Robert Macfarlane: writer and professor
"Justin Partyka is completely absorbed by the landscape and farming community in his remote part of Norfolk, which he has beautifully observed and recorded over many years."
Peter Osborne: Osborne Samuel gallery
"Justin Partyka is a photographer of quite exceptional talent who happens not to have had the easy loud metropolitan moment we associate with 'success'."
Francis Hodgson: writer and professor
“If anyone thought the tradition of landscape art was exhausted... these photographs will make them think again.”
Andrew Motion: poet and writer
“Justin’s commission made a huge contribution to our edition of the classic work of oral history Fenwomen. He conveys the bleakness of the fenland, while at the same time revealing, with an artist’s eye, its stark contemporary beauty. ”
John Christie: art director, Full Circle Editions
“Justin’s photographs of our garden revealed things we had never quite seen ourselves.”
Richard Walker and Harriet Ziegler: Suffolk
“I developed a lot more confidence as a photographer, with a greater understanding of light, shade and colour, how to fill the frame and get closer.”
Previous workshop participant
“As a practising artist Justin brings a great deal to his students that exceeds all the previous ‘how to’ offerings I have taken. I have learned and grown so much!”
Previous workshop participant
“I came away with a looser way of seeing and an understanding of how to use beautiful light.”
Previous workshop participant
“Interesting, stimulating, and fun! I learned much about photography and myself.”
Previous workshop participant
“I thoroughly enjoyed the week. I now have more confidence to discuss my photographs and a better understanding of how I work.”
Previous workshop participant
“I now look at the way I take photographs differently, with an interest in using the foreground, and light and shadow, which I never did before.”
Previous workshop participant