Artist Profile

Linda Burris Webster

Linda Burris Webster is a photographer who is driven by a curiosity about people.  Her interest in how social and political issues impact on daily lives underlines her work.  She has a BA in English Literature from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and an MA in Education.  

Linda draws inspiration from her travels to more than 50 countries, from years of living abroad, from extensive research. After distilling the lessons of her experiences and research, she uses her photography to explore and raise awareness of dilemmas, conflicts, and injustices that are unfolding in various locations around the world.

Linda was recently a finalist for the 2026 Lens Culture Art Photography Award.  She was also a finalist in 2025 for the Visual Arts Association Artist of the Year Award.  Her work was selected for the digital portion of the 2025 Head On Photography Festival in Sydney. In addition, one of her pieces was a semifinalist for the Head On Exposure Awards.   Her work has been exhibited at the Katherine Richards Gallery in Hove, Click Photography Festival (Raleigh, North Carolina), Fabrica Gallery (Brighton), Galerie LeBonheur est dans L’instant (Paris), Saleya Gallery (St. Paul de Vence, France) and 
Espacio Gallery (London).

Linda learned photography through books, short courses, visiting museums and galleries, studying others’ work and making mistakes.  Her first sculpture, produced in Junior High, was one of the regional winners in San Antonio and was sent to New York to be exhibited there. Originally from Texas, she has resided in Brighton, UK for a number of years  - but still says y’all!
 

ARTIST STATEMENT

This project draws attention to individual human lives—lives that are invisible when we look at a map. It is about people and their lands, people and their countries. It begins by identifying nations facing distressing issues: environmental destruction, human rights violations, gender inequality, political upheaval, and even war.

I explore these geopolitical concerns by transforming maps into sculptural forms. I tear, twist, cut, crumple, and reshape them—turning these maps into physical embodiments of the traumas each territory endures. The sculpted forms attempt to evoke both the suffering and the resilience of the people who inhabit these regions. Through this process, maps become something more visceral, expressive, and human.
The final works are photographs of these reconstituted map sculptures. By returning the transformed objects to a two-dimensional format, the photograph paradoxically echoes the flatness of the original map—once again denying the viewer full access to the form. This flattening becomes a metaphor for lost perspectives and suppressed narratives.
Before we could write, we made maps. They are among our earliest tools for understanding the world. A map is often seen as a neutral graphic representation—an objective model of space. But maps are far from impartial. They reflect choices: how to frame, scale, and orient the world. These choices carry ideological weight. For example, the Mercator projection, long dominant in Western cartography, greatly distorts the relative size of continents—shrinking those in the southern hemisphere while enlarging those in the north. Implicit within such distortions is a worldview shaped by power.
Like maps, photography is about perspective and authorship. A snapshot of an idea could describe both. By denying the viewer a full sense of the sculptural forms, these images also question agency: Who gets to see? Who decides what is seen?
Maps depersonalize. These images aim to do the opposite. They invite the viewer to look more closely, to question the narratives behind our most pressing headlines—and, most importantly, to consider the human experiences behind those headlines.