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205 Justin Partyka was born in Norfolk in 1972 and trained as folklorist at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. For fifteen years Partyka has been photographing throughout the East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, exploring a world of rabbit catchers, reed cutters, and the region's small-scale agrarian farmers. He calls them 'the forgotten people of the flatlands', who have an intimate relationship with the landscape that surrounds them. It is a way of life that is deeply rooted in the past and its traditional methods and knowledge. Partyka tells the story of these farmers and the fields they work, immersing himself in their world. His painterly use of colour and the particular qualities of the East Anglian light captures this timeless way of rural life. His photographs first received recognition when they were included in the exhibition of British landscape art, A Picture of Britain at the Tate Gallery, London, in 2005. Since then they have appeared in various publications including GRANTA, the Drawbridge, and burnmagazine.org. They were shown as a major solo exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, in 2009. In 2010 Partyka was commissioned by Full Circle Editions to produce a new series of photographs in the Cambridgeshire Fens, which were featured in the new edition of the book Fenwomen (2011). With his creative partner Bee Farrell, Paryka launched Backroad Books, a small publishing house for limited edition photography books. Their first publication was Field Work: Photographs from East Anglia released in October 2011. A major exhibition of these photographs was shown at the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, in 2012 Justin Partyka Born 1972