Following periods living in Edinburgh, Stockholm and Paris, Rab Harling (born England, 1972) graduated from Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham in 1996 with a BA (Hons.) in Film & Video, specialising in Cinematography. He moved to London in 1997 and freelanced in film & television as a camera technician before focussing his attention on stills photography, allowing him the freedom to pursue and develop the technical training he received in the film industry with his own ideas and passion for experimentation. Awarded an MA in Photography from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London in 2010, he subsequently pursued large-scale installation projects, working and living in East London’s iconic but controversial Balfron Tower. Witnessing first-hand the brutality with which working-class communities were being “decanted” and displaced by a Registered Social Landlord, working with luxury property developers, he founded Balfron Social Club in 2014 to campaign for the retention of a minimum of 50% social housing in all regeneration projects built in or upon purpose-built social housing communities.
Harling has exhibited, presented artist talks and film screenings, and participated in panel debates for the East End Film Festival, Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle, Wellcome Collection, UCL Urban Laboratory, Diffusion International Photography Festival at Cardiff University, London School of Economics, University of Warwick, Goldsmiths University of London, UCL Slade Research Centre, Focus E15, University of East London, University of Kingston, PEER Gallery, and for Londonist, as part of the Whose London? Festival at the Camden Peoples Theatre.
His work has been reviewed in The Art Newspaper, RIBA Journal, The Guardian, Time Out, British Medical Journal, Camden New Journal, the Canary, Colouring in Culture, Journal of Wild Culture, Architecture Today, TANK Magazine and has been debated in the House of Lords by Lord Cashman of Limehouse. He has worked on film & television productions including Football Factory, The Gigolos, Dispossession: the Great Social Housing Swindle, Poirot, Circus, Conspiracy, and many more. Harling’s own films have been screened in museums and galleries over 10,000 times.