25th September – 20th October 2022
Portadown on Polaroid
‘This exhibition is my attempt to pay homage to the extraordinary talent of William Eggleston ‘the father of colour photography’. He made his mark pioneering the depiction of everyday life in the suburbs of South American states with a sensitive and sympathetic eye through colour photography. My love for this type of photography stems from using polaroid cameras in the 80’s, taking a shot, the film ejecting and then wrapping it around in the air and watching the image slowly materialise.
The photographs are instead are taken with a free app on my mobile device, and I have found them more than acceptable maintaining the signature look
Street Strangers
I’ve been working on ‘Street Strangers’ for around five years now culminating in hundreds of portraits or strangers that I meet on my travels both North and South of Ireland. What started as a mild, hobbyist distraction has turned into a body of work that has prompted me to teach workshops. Until now the project only lives and breathes on social media. My love of street portraiture was born out of my love of street photography. Some might say that a posed street portrait is not genuine ‘street’ in the traditional sense – but I disagree. If we want to get really close/intimate to the subject then some means of acknowledgement/ permission is necessary.
It is an opportunity to engage with the subject in a meaningful way and for me personally the composition and execution of the photograph is just as exhilarating as the candid moment. Many of the great street photographers including Cartier-Bresson utilised the street portrait as part of their work. The recent posthumous work of Vivien Maier and Youtube Star Eric Kim confirms that street portraiture is still a strong suit in a documentary/street photographers arsenal. This exhibition is a representation of the wide variety of portraits, I have taken over the last five years.
