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.
These photographs grew from various meetings and connections on the Osmaston estate, Derby, where I had worked twenty-five years before to produce what became my series Pictures from the Real World in 1987-88. [published as monograph 2013]
From 2014 onwards, my parents being in ill health, prompted regular visits home. After my Dad died, my Mum’s decline meant increasing my journeys up and down the M1.
I’d been introduced Nindy Desai, an economics post-graduate. The then director of Format International Festival,Louise Fedotov-Clements, thought that we should meet after I expressed a desire to make more work addressing the themes of the 1980’s work. Nindy ran a family corner shop on the estate and was pivotal as I began work on what became a play, collaborating with two families specifically to write and direct the theatrical project The Lisa and John Slideshow [2017]
We quickly realised that I had photographed him as a child as he burnt unwanted packaging in a brazier outside of the shop. Now in C21st, dropping into his store, on the way to see my ailing parents, I had some time to make more photographs, for an hour or so, and often again, before returning home to London. From then on, during each trip, I made time to make portraits, from the same spot, slowly building a series, as people came and went, buying day-to-day goods; teabags, bread, sweets, scratch cards, milk and cigarettes. I recognised people from years before, children I had photographed now had their own babies.
A further familial connection was the wall, seen in each of these portraits, that used to surround the Rolls Royce Aero Engine plant that my Dad worked at for most of his adult life. And considering all of this, I see this series as being formy home City, a piece of social history representing the everyday of easily overlooked lives.
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.
These photographs grew from various meetings and connections on the Osmaston estate, Derby, where I had worked twenty-five years before to produce what became my series Pictures from the Real World in 1987-88. [published as monograph 2013]
From 2014 onwards, my parents being in ill health, prompted regular visits home. After my Dad died, my Mum’s decline meant increasing my journeys up and down the M1.