I plan to share this project via a number of means, exhibiting individual images in the environments they were created, a printed book, digitally via a dedicated websiteand eventually a whitewall gallery show.
Covid rules out physical exhibitions and travel but things can change and its no reason not to at least explore what could be and plan what can be achieved.
If I did exhibit I would want the images to be big, Jeff Wall or Gursky sized to be precise. Wall, is well known for his huge back lit film exhibits, although he hasnt actually exhibited in that way for 15 years now prefering framed prints on a wall says “I never wanted to do a photobook; I wanted my pictures to act more in a physical form. I also like the idea that they’re more public, that more than one person can see them at the same time. I like that open interchange with people standing in a room”
Having spent a lot of time researching books I understand where hes coming from, a book is a compromise, it has to be, even a huge production like Helmut Newtons Sumo, coming with its own Phillipe Starck table is relatively small in comparrison to even a modest print on a gallery wall.
My background shooting posters for advertising may have influenced my taste and its interesting to note Walls use of the lightboxes technique was informed by advertising imagery he’d seen.
So what could my show look like? Ive used ArtPlacer to render some ideas.
Although library spaces theyre indicitive of what I would seek out in reality.
The print size required to fill the indicitive spaces suprised me, most over 120 inches in width, I really am aspiring to Gursky/Wall levels of production.
A smaller intimate show would be no bad thing but I would have to balance the size of the images against the quantity shown.
The images stand in their own right, each can viewed in its own space- and does not rely upon another to inform its meaning, Im choosing to be deliberately vague in prescribing any meaning in favour of the viewer drawing their own conclusion by not supplying captions beyond the image title and the over arching description.
The question why a white wall gallery? Simply because I am attaching so much emotional baggage to these images I need to show them in a truly neutral zone and also at a very large size. So whilst this is a practical solution the essence of the white wall enables me to separate the images from their places totally.
One of the other public outcomes will be to install some of these images at the locations they were taken using local billboards, this would be a very different event, its purpose to merely rephotograph or as a catalyst to push discussion of the themes my images raise.