Goin’ to work and comin’ home and that…..
people outside of Nindy’s shop [2015-2017]
Osmaston Estate, Derby
I’ve come to understand portraiture as a potential collaborative event between subiect and photographer and the camera itself, an encounter that is governed and choreographed, by myriad contexts, desires and circumstance. The provenance of my own activity on the estate is considerable. Not only had I worked with the people there twenty-five years before, both in homes and outside on the street, but the wall seen in each photograph used to surround the Rolls Royce Aero Engine plant that my Dad worked at for most of his adult life.
For many, return trips to one’s hometown are ongoing. From 2014 onwards, seeing my parents, both in ill health, prompted regular visits. After my Dad died in 2017, my Mum’s decline created the need for increasing journeys up and down the M1. This body of work grew naturally within that time.
I worked on the Osmaston estate nearly thirty years before, to make my series Pictures from the Real World in 1987-88. I was interested to meet the people I photographed again in that book again and eventually got together with Lisa and John for my revisionist and theatrical project The Lisa and John Slideshow [2017] Pivotal to that was Nindy, who I’d been introduced in 2015 and whose family ran a corner shop on the Osmaston Estate. He was the initial connection between myself and Lisa and John so an alliance was formed. Through conversation we realised that I had photographed Nindy as a child outside of the family shop we were now sitting in as he burnt unwanted packaging in a brazier. That was around 1989. Now in C21st, dropping into his store to say hello on the way to see Mum, I had some time and began to photograph outside of the shop, for an hour or so, and again after seeing her before returning home to London. From then on, during each trip, I made time to photograph, from the same spot outside of the shop, slowly building the series. I liked the idea of being in one place, as people came and went buying day-to-day goods; teabags, bread, sweet, scratch cards, milk and cigarettes.
I understand this series as a piece of social history and a gift for my home City.
people outside of Nindy’s shop [2015-2017]
Osmaston Estate, Derby
I’ve come to understand portraiture as a potential collaborative event between subiect and photographer and the camera itself, an encounter that is governed and choreographed, by myriad contexts, desires and circumstance. The provenance of my own activity on the estate is considerable. Not only had I worked with the people there twenty-five years before, both in homes and outside on the street, but the wall seen in each photograph used to surround the Rolls Royce Aero Engine plant that my Dad worked at for most of his adult life.
For many, return trips to one’s hometown are ongoing. From 2014 onwards, seeing my parents, both in ill health, prompted regular visits. After my Dad died in 2017, my Mum’s decline created the need for increasing journeys up and down the M1. This body of work grew naturally within that time.
I worked on the Osmaston estate nearly thirty years before, to make my series Pictures from the Real World in 1987-88. I was interested to meet the people I photographed again in that book again and eventually got together with Lisa and John for my revisionist and theatrical project The Lisa and John Slideshow [2017] Pivotal to that was Nindy, who I’d been introduced in 2015 and whose family ran a corner shop on the Osmaston Estate. He was the initial connection between myself and Lisa and John so an alliance was formed. Through conversation we realised that I had photographed Nindy as a child outside of the family shop we were now sitting in as he burnt unwanted packaging in a brazier. That was around 1989. Now in C21st, dropping into his store to say hello on the way to see Mum, I had some time and began to photograph outside of the shop, for an hour or so, and again after seeing her before returning home to London. From then on, during each trip, I made time to photograph, from the same spot outside of the shop, slowly building the series. I liked the idea of being in one place, as people came and went buying day-to-day goods; teabags, bread, sweet, scratch cards, milk and cigarettes.
I understand this series as a piece of social history and a gift for my home City.