Bio
Claire Maxfield is a UK-based photographic artist whose practice explores the relationship between people, land, and the quiet structures that shape lived experience. Working primarily with photography, and at times drawing and mixed media, she is interested in how environments are formed through repeated actions, inherited behaviours, and material traces of occupation. Her work examines the ways domestic, rural, and coastal spaces carry signs of human presence, holding together histories of labour, habitation, erosion, use, and neglect.
Central to her practice is an attention to place as something socially and materially produced. Her projects often consider how landscapes and built environments are shaped by systems of power, routine, and care, and how these in turn influence gesture, perception, and behaviour. In this sense, her work is informed by ideas related to habitus: the ways social structures become embedded in everyday actions, spatial arrangements, and unspoken forms of knowledge. Rather than illustrating theory directly, Maxfield uses photography to see its residue in the world — in boundaries, surfaces, repetitions, absences, and the subtle signs of how a place has been occupied, managed, or left behind.
Alongside her artistic practice, Maxfield has professional experience in photographic archiving, including work with analogue collections at Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, and the Sunil Gupta + Charan Singh Archive, which includes work by Tessa Boffin.
MFA (Photography) University of the Creative Arts, Farnham,
BA (Hons) Fine Art (sculpture) West Surrey College of Art and Design
Continued Learning, Exhibitions, Residencies & Publications
Ongoing learning is central to my artistic development, enabling me to expand my skills, deepen my understanding, and remain open to new ways of making and thinking. It supports both creative growth and the confidence to develop work with greater ambition and clarity.
Upcoming / Current
Open Eye Stories. There is still light now. More here
Griffin Museum. Material Work: Toil & Grace 'waiting for doctor green' April 20 – May 20, 2026
Chester Photo Festival, Making Voices Heard, 16–29 October 2026
Shutter Hub, Feeling Seen, See Here 2 April–3 July 2026
Courses / Professional Development
Domestic Histories, Colin Pantall, April–June 2026
Global Histories, Colin Pantall, October–December 2025
Project Development Course, Colin Pantall, January–March 2025
Work Show Grow, 2024 Cohort Expansion Accelerator Programme
The Letting Go Workshop with Laura Hynd, May–June 2023
Awards / Grants
Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust, Grant Awarded, December 2023
Exhibitions
Raising the Roof, The Lightbox, Woking, October 2023–January 2024
Time to Think, Festival Pil’Ours, Saint Gilles Croix de Vie, France, 1 July–30 November 2019
Everything I Ever Learnt, Cambridge University, The Old Schools, Cambridge, April 2019
Lightworks, Foyer Gallery, UCA Farnham, February 2019
MA and Other Postgraduates, The Atkinson Gallery, Somerset, 2019
Graduate Show, The Lightbox, Woking, January 2019
Graduate Show, The Lightbox, Woking, January 2018
Documents/Portraits, Sherfield School Art Gallery, Hook, February 2014
Documents/Portraits, Harvey Gallery, Guildford, September 2007
Documents/Portraits, Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim, April 2005
Residencies
Dartmoor Summer School of Photography, Positive Light Projects, England, August 2019
Publications
Best of Source, archive selections by Susanna Galbraith
Abridged Magazine, in collaboration with Belfast Photo Festival, Claire Maxfield / Anna D’Alton, Apocrypha, 2021
Portfolio published in Source, Issue 102, Autumn 2020, The Unsayable Beyond Words
The Photographers’ Gallery, Photo Farnham Showcase, publication launch, 2019
Fleur and Arbor, Claire Maxfield, An Unkindness of Ravens, 2019