Mark power photographer biography

Born 1959, Harpenden, UK

As a child, Mark Power discovered his father's home-made enlarger in the family attic, a contraption consisting of an upturned flowerpot, a domestic light bulb and a simple camera lens.

His interest in photography probably began at this moment, though he later went to art college to study life-drawing and painting instead.

After graduating, he went travelling to South-East Asia and Australia. To support himself Power tried a number jobs along the way (he was an English teacher, a television actor and a fish farm attendant in Hong Kong; he painted cinema murals in Bangkok; produced large numbers of identical paintings for others to sell as their own in the Australian outback (very immoral, this one!) and ended up running the camera department of a large chemist in Bankstown, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney).

While travelling Power began to realise he enjoyed using a camera more than a pencil and decided to 'become a photograph