An original and moving project.
The power of focusing on a project has been mentioned many times here. A perfect example is the work of guest photographer Phil Brown from London.
I’ll let him speak for his images – you can see more on his web site.
“Of the 155 homicides in the Greater London area in 2007, 26 victims were teenagers: 18 were stabbed, eight were shot. The shootings have a particular resonance, with the UK being a country with strict gun control laws. These are the streets where these eight shootings occurred.”
I originally thought up this unconventional project in November 2007, whilst reading about the latest teenage shooting in London. It may have remained only an idea had I not read a 5B4 blog review of ‘The Forest’ by Paul Seawright the following day. This book seemed to be based on the same idea – ostensibly dull scenes, quite neutrally captured, devoid of people, but rendered horrific by their accompanying captions which convey the inhumanity of what has taken place there. Seeing how someone else had successfully developed a similar idea gave me the impetus to actually see the project through, for once, rather than adding it to the ever-growing list of ‘potentials’.
Generally speaking I feel, or rather stubbornly compel myself to feel, safe walking around any part of London. I’ve been here for long enough to know where the good and bad parts are and to know the mannerisms of people well enough to gauge the potential threats. That said I felt suitably unsettled in all of the eight places I went to photograph this project. I think the fact that they weren’t generally in the more salubrious parts of the city, coupled with the knowledge that I was standing in spots where bullets had flown and people had died, made me feel unusually vulnerable. Several of the streets were dead ends (hence the name of the project) which also added to the sense of dread. After the first trip out (which featured a run-in with the police who were in the middle of a double drug bust and couldn’t fathom what I was doing wandering around) I started leaving my wallet at home and only taking the essentials to get there and back and a couple of rolls of film for the thankfully worthless camera I was using (semi-functional Canon QL17).
The challenge, besides the probably misplaced fear generated by my over-active imagination, lay in trying to make something interesting out of the largely deserted and otherwise forgettable inner city housing estates. The quality of the pictures that my light-leaking, meterless camera produced is such that the whole project has probably been rendered unpublishable in any form other than on my website (and now Mr. Pindelski’s, thanks to his encouragement). However, I think that a visually coherent gathering of such images makes a valid point and should, at least, serve to give pause for thought.
War Memorial, Stoke Newington. Pass not without Remembrance.
Streatham Ice Arena. James Smartt-Ford, 16, shot on 3 February.
Fenwick Place, Clapham. Billy Cox, 15. Shot at his home on 14 February.
Long Walk, Plumsted. Philip Poru, 18. Shot on 14 October.
Clevedon Close, Stoke Newington. Etem Celebi, 17, shot on 14 November.
Thank you, Phil, for the opportunity to show your powerful documentary work.
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