Andy Wiener

– Photographic Artist -

The Rock Projections evoke the Green Man motif and draw on the folklore of Land Spirits, where spirits inhabit rocks and where rocks are believed to perceive the world around them. The stone tape theory states that rocks can capture and replay past events. I have projected my face as a baby and young boy onto lichen and moss-covered rocks and boulders in places I feel my spirit lives; places that hold an emotional connection for me from my childhood.
In mythology, the Green Man is a Forest god. He symbolizes the natural year's birth, death, and rebirth cycle and human connection with nature. In the UK we have forgotten what Nature looks and feels like. Our baseline for what we think of as nature bears no relationship to the biodiversity that existed before humans started farming the land, 6000 years ago, There are some special places around the UK where woodland has been allowed to re-establish itself by controlling deer overgrazing and excluding sheep. Biodiversity has increased quickly in these places. These digital assemblages are made by
In mythology, the Green Man is a Forest god, an emblem of the birth, death, and rebirth cycle of the natural year, and a symbol of human connection with nature. The Green Man motif inspired me to imagine the human relationship with nature in a distant, forgotten past, drawing on Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. In keeping with my practice, I have used masks of my face and family, this time using projection and 3D printing. As hunter-gatherers, we were part of nature for the first 300,000 years of our existence. But for the last 10,000 years, since the Neolithic Revolution, humans have been in conflict with nature. The UK, for example, was covered in forest, but this was cleared, bit by bit, for cereal and livestock farming. Seventy years ago, after WWII, the destruction of nature in the UK accelerated dramatically in the service of increased productivity. Native Woodland now covers only 2.5% of the UK. The UK is ranked one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and Britain ranks bottom in Europe for nature connectedness. Humans urgently need to reconnect with nature, to value it again, and allow nature, in all its wildness and chaos, back into the world.
In Folklore the Forest is a place of danger but also a place of safety. The Babes in the Wood series draws on the old stories of vulnerable infants and children who were lost in the forest.
This series was made in 2019. I was thinking about memories from the past and issues around what is remembered and what is lost. I made photographic masks from archival images of myself, my sister, various school friends, and even an ex-girlfriend. I decided to use a framework in each image of black and white masks and black and white archival photographs. I like a formal structural thread to run through a group of images.
Photographic masks were used again in this series. This time, I used masks made from archive photographs of members of my family (on both my maternal and paternal sides). Parents, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Most of these people I had never met, but instead had only been told about. I travelled with the masks to places where these family members had lived many years ago. Some of those places were the same as they had been then, but many places had changed dramatically. When the masks were worn in these places, an illusion was created of my ancestors coming back to life in a ghostly, surreal way. The participants who wore the masks were either people I met in these places who agreed to help, or family and friends. Sometimes, I wore a mask and a friend would operate the camera.
This series was a response to my move from London to the outer suburbs near the M25 in 1997. I made the work in 2006 and revisited this series in 2011 reworking some of the images. I am thinking about how materialism has worked its way into the core of our identities, and the impact of this on the natural world
Life Story Work (2008 -2012) consists of fifteen images in which I presented myself to the camera as various identities and as different life stages. This work was inspired by the social work practice called ‘Life Story Work’ where children, who have been disconnected from their pasts as a result of being fostered or adopted, are invited to explore their past, often with the help of photographs. I have used Photoshop in this work to montage images together and to manipulate my features or body shape as required. Flowers are present in every image and provide a thread through the series until the end of the series when the flowers enter my body. I think that my practice as a psychiatrist has allowed me to integrate and work through the different aspects of my personality, and the life stages I have lived through. This work was exhibited in a solo show at Street Level Photoworks in 2012.
Dolls and masks were assembled in topographical manner into constructed tableaux on the scale of children’s playthings. However, although the images reveal close detail, familiar visual logic does not operate in this work, rather the experience is surrealistic. The eight images, presented as diptychs, tell a story about birth and death, in a series of opposites, extremes, or limits. These images were inspired by the death of the photographer Murray Johnston, who died on the 3rd of January 1990, shortly after my first child was born. They were published in Portfolio Magazine in 1990 and exhibited in the solo show at Stills Gallery in Edinburgh in 1989.
Religious Scenes were made in 1987-88 and used the textiles of Paola Cumiskey from her Royal College of Art Degree Show in 1987. I have told the story of the life and afterlife of Christ and the Virgin using compositions based on traditional representations. I was specifically drawing inspiration from pre-renaissance icons. In this modern story Christ gives in to the temptation to be famous and rich and go on TV to spread his message. He then turns his back on riches and he and his mother retire to heaven to join the father and the holy ghost, in non materialist bliss.
I made photographic masks of Barbie Doll, Ken Doll, and He-Man and actors wore the masks “in situ” in these constructed tableaux. These images were made before photoshop, so they are single exposure images. The un-awakened Barbie inevitably marries Ken.
This series was made in 1986 while I was studying at the Royal College of Art in London. This work has been exhibited widely and is part of the Photography Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. To make these images, I photographed myself 20 times to make the expressions I needed. These photographs were then trimmed to make flat masks. The performers then wore the masks in situ. These are single exposure, pre-Photoshop images. The masks look 3D but are, in fact, flat. For more information on the masks, see here. William Hogarth first told this tale about Tom Rakewell, in 1733, in a set of engravings. In Hogarth’s story, the Rake is a morally bankrupt individual who squanders his father’s inheritance on women, gambling, and drinking. He marries badly and ends up mad and destitute in Bedlam. My Rake enters life with every intention of doing

Andy Wiener
Born and raised in Edinburgh, Andy Wiener studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London, where he has lived and worked since the mid-1980s. For over three decades, his work has explored the staged photography genre, often incorporating photographic masks to delve into themes of identity and perception. His images have been widely exhibited, including European Photographers of the Year 1987, a solo show at Stills Gallery in 1990 that toured the UK, Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow (2012), and group exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2013/14) and Photo London (2022) with England & Co Gallery.



His first monograph, Cautionary Tales, was published by Dewi Lewis in 1990, followed by Visitation Scenes in 2020. He is an active member of Photofusion in London, where he continues to develop and share his photographic practice. Alongside his visual work, Wiener is also an NHS consultant psychiatrist specialising in child and adolescent mental health. A curiosity about what lies beneath the surface connects both his artistic and clinical work.