Only With The Heart

Vernissage: Tuesday 9 January at 17:00

David Pratt: Only With The Heart
"Only With The Heart" was first shown in 2019 at Sogo Arts gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. The title for this collection of work takes its name from lines in the classic novella The Little Prince by French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It chimes also with the belief of that other French creative master, photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, who once observed that…

“To take a photography is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life”

This retrospective documentary collection though by no means exhaustive in terms of the photographer’s archive, includes a large number of images taken by David Pratt over numerous decades in various countries facing war, conflicts and social upheaval.
The objective of these images is to reveal war’s tragic effects on combatants and civilians alike. The people in these images are ordinary people, anyone; what happened to them happened to uncounted others.

“This exhibition is a look back over decades, but it remains a cameo retrospective given the huge archive I now have. That I have not grown weary of photographing war is perhaps because of one thing above all else.
I’m talking now about the remarkable courage and fortitude of those ordinary people I have met along the way, caught up in war through no fault of their own.
Their generosity and openness in allowing me into their lives, often at dangerous and traumatic moments, is what has kept me going these 40 years, and reaffirms my own faith in humankind’s capacity to endure and occasionally overcome.
It was a long time ago when I decided what the title of this exhibition would be. For not only does it come from a book by one of my favourite writers, Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, but captures the very essence I believe of what is required to photograph war and what it inflicts on ordinary people.”
David Pratt

Content warning: This exhibition includes violent and sensitive imagery.

David Pratt: Pictures From Ukraine
In March 2022, with Russian tanks still surrounding Kyiv, veteran photojournalist David Pratt travelled to Ukraine along with fellow Scottish documentary filmmaker Robbie Fraser. Their intention was to bear witness to the biggest unfolding crisis in Europe since World War 2. The result was a multi-part television documentary film series for BBC Scotland, “Pictures From Ukraine,” which tells the story of this and subsequent journeys to the country up until the present.

Like the documentary films themselves, David Pratt’s photographs in this exhibition - part of a larger archive - form a compelling chronicle of the conflict so far as well as a vital insight into its origins.

“My connection with Ukraine goes back some years to 2014 as these images reflect. But above all they are about a war that is very much ongoing, one that directly or indirectly is impacting on all our lives. The ‘Pictures From…’ series has always looked at conflict through the prism of the stills image which has that unique quality to capture a moment in time and make us pause and ponder that moment. I hope Pictures From Ukraine does precisely that.”
David Pratt

About the Artist
Photographer, journalist, broadcaster and author, David Pratt has spent almost four decades working as a war correspondent and covering foreign affairs.

In that time his work has been published and broadcast worldwide. Among the many media outlets to which he has contributed are the BBC, The Herald, Sunday National, The Scotsman, Sunday Times, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, Svenska Dagbladet, Channel 4 News, Reuters, Agence France Presse (AFP), Al-Jazeera, The National (Abu Dhabi), Sogo Magazine and Black + White Photography Magazine.

Educated at Glasgow School of Art, from where he graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, he then taught art and design history at the famous school before beginning to focus full-time on documentary photography and journalism.

Among many accolades for his work, he has been named "Journalist of the Year" in the Scottish Press Awards. He has also twice been "Reporter of the Year" and twice "Feature Writer of the Year" and is a five times finalist in the Amnesty International Media Awards for human rights reporting.

He is author of Intifada - The Long Day of Rage, a reportage account of the Palestinian uprisings. His life photographing and reporting on wars around the world has been the subject of a BBC Scotland / Screen Scotland television documentary series.

The first two films in this series Pictures From Afghanistan and Pictures From Iraq, were both premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in March 2020 and 2022 respectively. A third film Pictures From the Balkans was also broadcast in 2022. Pictures From Ukraine formed a two part film that was shown on BBC Scotland in 2023.