Anne-Katrin Purkiss

Anne-Katrin Purkiss (born in Chemnitz, Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany, 1959) is a German photographer. She moved to Britain in 1984, after graduating from University of Leipzig in 1983. Her father Joachim Seyffarth (1928–2014) was a German curator of monuments and photographer.

Her Sculptors project documented sculptors in their working environment and includes portraits of Dame Elisabeth Frink, Kenneth Armitage, Andy Goldsworthy, Sir Anthony Caro and Lynn Chadwick.

Photographs from her collection of her portraits of British scientists was shown in exhibitions at the Royal Society and the National Portrait Gallery, London including portraits of Sir Alec Jeffreys, Lord Darzi, Sir Martin Evans, Sir Tim Hunt and Dame Louise Johnson.

She compiled photographic records of the restoration of the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, between 2008 and 2011, J.M.W. Turner’s House Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham, London, from 2016 to 2017 and Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, Suffolk, from 2014 to 2022.

Her early work includes a large number of photographs of her childhood and youth in the GDR (East Germany) which is catalogued in the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library).

She works primarily in black-and-white, using available light and Hasselblad.

Works in public collections There are over 100 photographic portraits by Purkiss in the National Portrait Gallery collection including portraits of Denis Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Simon Rattle and Georg Solti. Her work is also held in the collections of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society, London, the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, the New Hall Art Collection, University of Cambridge, the Ingram Collection, in the archive of TATE, the National Art Library, the library of Yale Centre for British Art, Pallant House Gallery, Walsall Art Gallery and the Royal College of Art.

Publications Local Faces (2001) Orleans House Gallery (with introductions by Bamber Gascoigne and Terence Pepper) Sculptors 1986-2007 (2007) Orleans House Gallery (with an introduction by Victoria Worsley, Henry Moore Institute) Images of the GDR akg-images (Berlin–London–Paris) (2009) Scientists 1985-2010 (2010) Artists at Home and at Work (2015) The Gainsborough's House Society Faces of the South Downs - Portraits of a Landscape (2015) Miriquidi Books Sculptors 1986-2016 (2017) Miriquidi Books ; foreword by Peter Murray (Yorkshire Sculpture Park) and Adrian Glew, archivist at Tate Gallery Anthony Eyton - Studio pictures (2017) Miriquidi Books Creative Connections – Portraits of Women Scientists and Artists (2019), Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge Sculptors at Work (2021) F.E.McWilliam Gallery & Studio Gainsborough’s House – Reviving an Artist’s Birthplace (2023) Gainsborough’s House Society Faces of the South Downs - Portraits in a Landscape (2025) Miriquidi Books

Illustrations to publications Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (current edition) Poland – European Tiger, Euromoney Books 1993 Finland – A Coming of Age, Euromoney Books, 1996 The lost Palace of Whitehall, RIBA, 1998 Postman's Park: G. F. Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice Watts Gallery, 2008 Watts Chapel: A Guide to the Symbols of Mary Watts's Arts and Crafts Masterpiece, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2010, An Artists’ Village, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011, Paolo Cavinato – Constellation, Royal British Society of Sculptors, 2011 SKULPTUR, Hatje Cantz, 2015 Secrets of the High Woods, South Downs National Park Authority, 2016 Sculpture Shock - Site-specific interventions, Black Dog Publishing, 2016 J.M.W. Turner’s House - The conservation of Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham, 2016/17, Turner’s House Trust, 2017 John Hitchens - Aspects of Landscape, Sansom & Company, Bristol 2020 Diana Armfield: A Lyrical Eye, Paul Holberton Publishing 2021 CONVERGENCE – Paintings by John Hitchens, Felix & Spear, London, 2022 John Lyons Carnivalesque (2024), The Whitworth, John Hitchens - Elements of Landscape, Sansom & Company, Bristol 2025

Awards Wellcome Image Award 2009 German Photobook Award 2024

Portraits of Purkiss The National Portrait Gallery collection has a 1994 print of Purkiss by Alan Symes.