I’m honoured to have been asked to display work from my recent ‘Home’ project as part of the upcoming Document Film Festival, the international human rights documentary film festival which is running in Glasgow for its 12th year, and based at the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) in Glasgow. My images will be on display in the Saramago Bar, upstairs in the CCA, from 5pm on Thursday 9th October, until the end of the festival on Sunday 12th October.
The weekend is filled with loads of brilliant documentaries on all sorts of human rights issues, so make sure to check some of them out!
Working with people who have moved to Scotland from elsewhere, I have undertaken a research-based photographic exploration of the concept of home. The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and from a variety of countries including Peru, Afghanistan, Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, the USA and Somalia. With so much negative media attention surrounding the issue of immigration, not only in the UK but also around the world, this project is an attempt to counteract this harmful rhetoric and celebrate the diversity that immigration creates. While the objects photographed are specific to individuals, the body of work as a whole demonstrates the universality of some of the main indicators of home, with family, friendship and culture at the forefront. While the specifics may change, there is a commonality in the things that we as human beings hold dear.
Work from my most recent project, ‘Home’ is showing in two upcoming exhibitions. The first is my degree show, along with 7 other graduating photographers from my year. Meraki runs from Tuesday 27th May until Friday 30th May 2014 at Wasps Artists Studios in Hanson Street, Dennistoun, Glasgow. Please join us for the preview on 27th May from 6-8pm.
The second exhibition is my first solo show, and is running as part of the schedule for Refugee Week Scotland 2014 at The Arches, Glasgow. It may be listed in some publications under an alternative name, ‘What Home Means’. There is a preview event on Thursday 5th June from 6-8pm:
Working with people who have moved to Scotland from elsewhere, I have undertaken a research-based photographic exploration of the concept of home. The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and from a variety of countries including Peru, Afghanistan, Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, the USA and Somalia. With so much negative media attention surrounding the issue of immigration, not only in the UK but also around the world, this project is an attempt to counteract this harmful rhetoric and celebrate the diversity that immigration creates. While the objects photographed are specific to individuals, the body of work as a whole demonstrates the universality of some of the main indicators of home, with family, friendship and culture at the forefront. While the specifics may change, there is a commonality in the things that we as human beings hold dear.
Working with people who have moved to Scotland from elsewhere, I have undertaken a research-based photographic exploration of the concept of home. The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and from a variety of countries including Peru, Afghanistan, Slovakia, Italy, Lithuania, the USA and Somalia. With so much negative media attention surrounding the issue of immigration, not only in the UK but also around the world, this project is an attempt to counteract this harmful rhetoric and celebrate the diversity that immigration creates. While the objects photographed are specific to individuals, the body of work as a whole demonstrates the universality of some of the main indicators of home, with family, friendship and culture at the forefront. While the specifics may change, there is a commonality in the things that we as human beings hold dear.
This project was conceived for my main Creative Project for the Honours year of my degree in Photography. I chose to focus on some of the areas that interest me most – home, people’s relationship with space and their environment, equality and social anthropology. Although at times very challenging, this project has been interesting, fulfilling and enjoyable to work on. Given that the work was carried out for my Honours year project, the timescale was rather small in comparison to how long I would ideally have liked to have had to complete it. Following the initial group research I carried out, I had time to complete the process of interviewing and photographing portraits and the homes of seven participants. This project is something that I feel could be continued in the future, given the time and opportunity to meet with more immigrants to Scotland. It would also be interesting to work with people who are not immigrants, to see how things compare. Not coming from a background in research myself, it would also be really interesting to work with a researcher on a joint project, either continuing this one or doing something new but in a similar vein.
In terms of inspiration for this project, my two main influences were James Mollison and Rineke Dijkstra. James Mollison’s series ‘Where Children Sleep’ was particularly of interest to me:
Copyright James Mollison
(from artist’s website) “Where Children Sleep – stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms. When Fabrica asked me to come up with an idea for engaging with children’s rights, I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was. It occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances. From the start, I didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations. It seemed to make sense to photograph the children themselves, too, but separately from their bedrooms, using a neutral background. My thinking was that the bedroom pictures would be inscribed with the children’s material and cultural circumstances ‘ the details that inevitably mark people apart from each other ‘ while the children themselves would appear in the set of portraits as individuals, as equals ‘ just as children. This is a selection from the 56 diptychs in the book (Chris Boot November 2010). The book is written and presented for an audience of 9-13 year olds ‘ intended to interest and engage children in the details of the lives of other children around the world, and the social issues affecting them, while also being a serious photographic essay for an adult audience.”
I normally prefer to incorporate the environment into my portraits, but on this occasion I decided to work in the studio, partly as a challenge, and partly because I felt that this approach suited the project. Taking my inspiration from James Mollison’s use of a neutral background, I employed a similar approach in order to demonstrate the universal connections between all of us as human beings, while showing the differences through the images symbolising peoples’ sense of home. Of course, universal elements are evident in these symbolic images as well. My initial idea was to create diptychs or triptychs consisting of a portrait of each person and supporting images representing their sense home. However, due to the sensitive nature of the subject, and the fact that some participants were refugees or asylum seekers, it became clear that a degree of anonymity would be important. In order to do this, I chose not to include names or countries of origin, and additionally chose to display the images in a way which would not directly link each person to specific items.
A selection of portraits from the project
The images will be displayed by placing a montage of ‘home’ images between each portrait, with everything printed at A1 size to give maximum impact when viewed from a distance, as well as allowing people to examine the images up close and see all the details. The portraiture of Rineke Dijkstra has been influential on me in terms of both the physical scale of her work, and her approach to portraiture. I found a great quote from her recently from an interview about her approach in which she explains that she looks for a “sense of stillness and serenity” in a portrait that stands out from the others (from the book Image Makers, Image Takers by Anne-Celine Jaeger).
Some of my favourite images taken over 3 nights at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London earlier this year. All 3 nights were fantastic, with Mugison supporting.
Mugison
OMAM played to a sold-out Shepherd’s Bush Empire every night
Raggi received a surprise birthday cake onstage on the second night, presented by Mugison while the band engaged the crowd in singing happy birthday!
I’ve covered the BBC Introducing stage at T in the Park for the past 3 years, and it’s always a great stage to photograph. Great new bands, enthusiastic crowd, lovely people and freedom of access to get a range of photographic viewpoints make it a fantastic experience. Shooting every band on the stage over the weekend can be pretty non-stop, so it always flies past really quickly. I’ve selected some of my favourite images from the past 3 years for you to have a look at here.
Please remember that the copyright for these images is owned by the BBC, so please don’t copy or use them without seeking permission from the BBC first. Thanks!
These photos are from a while back, shot for the BBC for their website covering the World Pipe Band Championships in 2010 and 2011. The brief gave me the opportunity to shoot with a lot of creative freedom, which I really enjoyed. As you can see from the sample of some of my favourite images I’ve posted here, this included the pipe bands tuning up and performing, behind the scenes of making the television programme, people enjoying the event, and the odd animal or two in attendance!
Hope you enjoy looking at them, please remember that the copyright of these images is owned by the BBC, so don’t copy or use them without seeking consent from them first. Thanks!
I’ve been featured this month on Central Station’s My Process! It’s all about my recent project photographing men in typical female fashion poses. So if you like the images below and want to find out more about how and why I did it, ou can check it out here:
And for a closer look at the images, here they are below. My models are all friends, are were amazing! So pleased with the effort they put in to getting it right.
These were the images I used as inspiration for my shots!
This work carries on from a project I began last semester at university, in which I photographed and interviewed women working in the creative industries in Scotland. The idea was to present these women as strong role models, with a view to encouraging girls and women to pursue similar careers. As part of the project, I carried out research into the gender equality, or lack of, prevalent in each specific industry.
With this progression of the project for the second semester, I took a slightly different path, and concentrated on women working in traditionally male-dominated roles, following the same process of background research, photography and interview. My aim for this project was to create work that questions the perception of what people see as appropriate roles for men and women, with a view to expanding the choice of career options open to women. In order to do this, I wanted to photograph women working in a wide variety of different occupations that are usually considered the domain of men, and are therefore areas in which fewer women are found. Due to time constraints, I only completed the process for 7 women, but it is certainly a project which could be continued. I would also love to photograph women working in the emergency services, mining and agriculture, to name a few. It would also be good to photograph men working in traditionally female roles (although there aren’t nearly as many traditionally female roles as male!).
I found that this time around, I got into more in-depth discussions around not only the issue of gender imbalance in the workplace, but also the perception of women in society. I’m delighted that all these women were so happy to take part in the project, and I’ve really enjoyed spending time with them and finding out more about what they do, as well as their personal opinions and experiences. I hope to carry on and create a whole documentary series.
This work forms the basis of a recently submitted university project, and an area I hope to continue exploring, focusing on women working within the creative industries in Scotland, all fantastically talented and succeeding in their respective careers. In a world where we increasingly have poor role models in the form of untalented, vacuous so called ‘celebrities’, I thought that it would be a good idea to look at the wonderfully creative positive role models that we do have.
Many thanks to all who helped me with this project, first and foremost the participants, but not forgetting the very helpful and accommodating people at the venues used for the shoots, in particular the Citizens Theatre, BBC Propworks, The Academy of Make Up, Chem19 Studios and The Forest Of Black.
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