Elmira Watts' biography
Elmira Watts BA(Hons) Photography, ARPS LBIPP LMPA, is a Russian settled in the UK. She's a keen photographer and a Hasselblad camera owner.
Elmira Watts in the garden of her English home in rural Somerset, UK in 2009.
• early life
Elmira Watts was born Elmira Guseynova in the closed provincial city of Kuybyshev (now Samara), in the Volga Federal District of the then Soviet Union, in 1968. (Samara is about the size of Birmingham, UK.) Her parents worked for Kuybushev Nefte Geophisica (a Samaran oil and gas industry company). They collected a large and diverse library of books at home, and Elmira developed a taste for reading. She read about art and museums, as well as devouring books of visual effects and enjoying literary science fiction.
She enjoyed a full family life with her parents and siblings, and was a notable junior speed skater during her high school years.
• education
Elmira Watts did her vocational education at what's now Samara State University in Russia. Later in life, as a mature student in the UK, she did a full-time academic BA(Hons) in Photography at Bournemouth University's Wiltshire College, Salisbury. She joined the Royal Photographic Society, and signed up as a licentiate of two trade associations: the British Institute of Professional Photography, and the Master Photographers' Association. While still a full-time student, she submitted her best student photograph to the MPA annual competition. It won the overall photograph of the year, and the portrait category. She has kept up her membership of these organizations ever since, and continues to enter competitions. She continues to promote her award, and herself as a photographer, in the media and through exhibitions.
Elmira Watts BA(Hons) Photography, graduated as a mature student.
• career highlights
- Won BIPP/MPA BPPA UK Photographer of the Year 2004
- The same picture also won BIPP/MPA BPPA UK Portrait Photographer of the Year 2004
- Rented a studio in London, UK for twelve months in 2008/09
- Won the BIPP South West regional portrait competition in 2009
- The broadcaster TRC "Terra" and the energy company VolgoPromGas sponsored an exhibition in her home city of Samara, Russia in 2009, in recognition of her UK photography "Oscar" (the MPA award)
- Was interviewed for an arts program on Russian television in 2009 about the exhibition
- Held her own small exhibition of photographs in Penza, Penza Oblast, in the Volga Federal District of Russia, in 2009
Elmira Watts (centre) being presented with the British Institute of Professional Photography south west regional portrait competition trophy in 2009, by Llewellyn Robins HonFBIPP and Chris Harper, Chief Executive of the BIPP.
• personal life
Elmira relocated to the UK permanently in 2001 when she married Chris Watts, a British builder who runs his own firm. The couple live in the house he built in the small town of Wincanton in rural Somerset. Between them, they have three grown-up children.