A couple of weeks ago I went to install my Legacy Project at Leeds Museum, Millennium Square (Community Corridor, first floor). Here are some photographs of the install.
The project is about people who take part in sport and is set to coincide with the Rio Olympics, this photographic project is about Olympic Sports and I set out to investigate the legacy that the 2012 London Games has left. It has taken me about eighteen months to complete and has been a great deal of hard work. Taking the photographs is the easy part, it is the contacting and making links with clubs and individuals that is the hard part. I am extremely grateful to the people who helped me to produce the work by agreeing to participate or point me in the right direction.
The exhibition is a collection of seventeen A1 Prints. I shot the images in digital using a Phase 1 and Fuji X-Pro1.
I am going to be at the space to meet with anyone who is interested in chatting about the project on Sunday the 26th of June from 2pm until 4pm, feel free to come along and see the work and say hello. The exhibition is on until August.
Apologise for the quality of these images, I shot these on my phone…
A few years ago I completed my MA by Research and to be honest the project
was all consuming. The work undertaken was huge and it took a lot of my
energies. I took a couple of months off photographing and thinking about what
to do next (photographically). I started again by photographing my friends and
it was the quote by Annie Leibovitz who said in her book At Work (2008) that, photographers should start by photographing who and what they
know. I am paraphrasing and what she actually said was that “young
photographers”; I ain’t young anymore.
So my idea is to photograph Men in Shed’s and this is a project I have
wanted to start for some time. I like the idea of people beavering away in sheds
to produce a product or a project that is so personally impenetrable to people
outside an inner sanctum if you will. My idea being that we spend so much time
and energy on producing a thing that the thing is totally irrelevant to others.
My vice, if you like beyond photography and my family (I have to say that) is
Volkswagens; although the order of preference can change. So, these are a few
snaps of a larger (to be shot) body of work. I am dead into the idea of
photographing people and telling a story, it took me some time to persuade Rick
(first photo) and less time to ask Pete (second) from Alan H. Schofield’s, in fact Pete was
posed and ready before I had finished asking.
The images are shot on Tri-X and they are flat, I like the compositions, but I have been shooting medium format colour (digital) for a while and this is a total departure. Okay, I did process and print the images on my lunch hour at work so they are rushed. The images look akin to Ian Beesley’s but you can argue that they are not as good – make your own mind up. I am going to shoot again (and again) on digital, but I have not given up on film; I intend to go back to shooting Ilford HP5+, the old faithful and to get more contrast into the images.
It is strange how you meet people and how photography brings us together. A couple of years ago my old tutor (from my MA) and good friend passed away suddenly. I wanted to do something to show off Clive’s (Egginton) photographs and I was putting together a series of exhibitions with another photographer, so the obvious thing to do was to include Clive’s photos. Clive was a keen film user and used his two Leica’s, so getting access to his archive was difficult. Another ex-student of Clive’s gave me the contact details of Stuart Anderson who had some images, but Stuart lives in Saint Maden, Brittany, France.
Last summer Stuart had also put some images of Clive’s in an exhibition of Saint Maden and its people in the surrounding villages. My parent’s live in Brittany and while visiting them we decided to make the two-hour drive from mum and dad’s to see Stuart and make ourselves more acquainted. After viewing the exhibition, we had a long chat about Clive and photography and life in general over a glass of home made apple juice and tuna sandwiches (of which one of Stuart’s cat had much of the tuna (not the bread)). The photos from this trip are on my hard drive somewhere.
This year the visit was fleeting, after flowing the satnav from Caen (pronounced Kon) all went well until ‘She’ (the satnav lady) decided that we should leave the main roads and drive through a field. I often get old looks from the French for driving a car with British number plates, but I did have a very puzzled Brit (judging by his number plate) look at me with bemusement as I drove past his house into the field, no doubt smiling away to myself.
Anyway, the short visit had us chatting about photography and the fact I had a Phase 1 camera in the car made Stuart weak at the knees eventually ended up with taking a couple of quick snapshots of Stuart and his partner Gabrielle. What Stuart was supposed to be doing was helping to putting together a fête for the local community; instead we chatted about photography, exhibitions, trips to the UK, the French photographer JR and Stuart’s trip to ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. We did do some work, we put the bar together and piped up the bier and cidre for the grownups, while others got the games and food ready.
Next time we will stay for longer, but in the meantime the photos will have to suffice. Cheers Stuart.
