Lucy Helton

PhD Student

Department of Space and Climate Physics

Lucy Helton is a visual artist, born in London and received her master’s degree in fine art photography from Hartford Art School, CT, in 2014. She’s currently a funded PhD practice-led researcher at the Slade School of Fine Art focusing on human environmental impact in outer space. Rising from a necessity to express her personal anxieties and concerns about the environment, her first photo book Actions of Consequence was nominated for the MACK First Book Award 2014, shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award 2015, and The Anamorphosis Prize 2015. Her book Transmission (Silas Finch, 2015) – a message from our future to our recent past – printed on antiquated fax machines, was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award 2015.

Seeing visual arts as a means of engagement, Helton uses concept-specific technologies to image the relationship between human beings and the landscapes we inhabit. Gaining a HAM (amateur) radio license, she continues to test the boundaries of art and technology by making both long and short-range image transmissions.

Helton’s books are held in the collections of the Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Library, MoMA Archives and Library, MET Watson Library, Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs of the New York Public Library, Houston Center of Photography, International Center of Photography, NY, Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts Leipzig, Germany, Alkek Library at Texas State University, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK and the Tate Library Special Collection, London.