Moore has long built a career as a documentarian of English life, scratching at its edges to reveal what might otherwise stay out of sight. He has an eye not only for stories from the margins, but for how they are told – questioning where they begin and end. He frames his images with as much of a view to what they omit as to what they contain. A hand holding a lit cigarette pushes into the edge of a shot, or the arm of a chair appears, hinting at what lies beyond. “There are endless narratives that are excluded,” he says. “Each photograph can only look in one direction.” 

With Pictures from the Real World, Moore set out to make a documentary series that addressed issues of social inequity in an area that was familiar to him. He grew up in Derby in the Midlands and worked for a period for the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Services), where he would visit nearby social housing like that which he later encountered when working on the series. In both occupations, he found himself knocking on the doors of strangers. When it came to photographing this project, “I got a lot of rejections from people but I persisted,” he admits.  

It was 1985 when Moore first entered West Surrey College as a photography student, a period when the miners’ strikes were regularly in the news. He was taught by the likes of Paul Graham, Martin Parr and Jo Spence, British photographers who had each made a name for themselves with their own distinctive approaches to documenting the nation under Thatcherism. “It was a thrilling time to study photography,” Moore recalls. “There was a lot of excitement about colour photography. Documentary practice was in a place of excitement and tension all at the same time, and there was a lot of synergy between different methods of addressing societal issues.”

Pictures from the Real World reflected Moore’s growing interest in aligning his political and social observations in a creative form. “It wasn’t about making great photographs at that time. It was social curiosity as much as anything else,” he says. “I hoped to make a contribution to that genre.” He worked with the five families who invited him in, documenting them and their homes over a period of months. “I learnt about families doing their best, really like any other, with their ups and downs.”

 “These pictures were made during an economic recession,” Moore explains. They were shot on a housing estate which many former workers from the nearby Derby Rolls Royce aero-engine plant called home. While the factory had moved out of town, it signified the wider deindustrialisation that was taking place across the north of England at the time. As a child, Moore remembers encountering a series of late-18th century Joseph Wright paintings in Derby Museum. These atmospheric images of flames and planetary models depict the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, reflecting a growing fascination with the possibilities of the machine. “I found these works very affecting,” Moore remarks. “And I think that there’s a sure connection between them and the work I would later make in the late 90’s around past industry.”

“Documentary practice borrows from cinema and fine art, and obviously all artists absorb what is around them”

In 2017, over 30 years after he first took the photographs in Pictures from the Real World, Moore returned to the same site and invited Lisa and John, a couple who had appeared in these images all those years ago, to reflect upon and readdress the pictures from their own perspective. The resulting conversations became The Lisa and John Slideshow, a 40-minute fictionalised play performed in London and Belfast in 2018. “The play is an attempt at revision, at renegotiating some sort of equitable representation for the subjects within the image, asserting their control over the archives of the work.”

“My house had cherry wallpaper in the kitchen…” Lisa reflects in the script, much of which is taken verbatim from the pair’s conversations with Moore. They also question the character of the photographer himself, and at one point Lisa declares: “David said he’d bring us the prints but he never did.” For Moore, this process of looking through the images with them enabled him to reanimate – and rewrite – photographs that were otherwise fixed and frozen in time. “[The play] admits that every document is a blend of fiction and fact,” he says. “Using words instead of images, Lisa and John were able to speak of things outside of the photograph, filling in those gaps, and shifting the context of the same photographs.” 

The images that appear in Pictures from the Real World are unmistakably English, with their particular assembly of wallpaper, posters, birthday cards, and even the light switches and door handles fulfilling familiar eighties visual tropes. Does Moore see the series as being shaped by his own national identity? “Of course, but contemporary documentary practice has taken on various visual influences for years,” he says. “It borrows from cinema and fine art, and obviously all artists absorb what is around them. I try to make everything that I do as authentic as it can be to my own observations, regardless of what is going on unconsciously.”

It is a perspective that pervades another early series, completed the year before Moore began work on Pictures from the Real World. English Domestic Interiors compiles a study of the objects, decorations and ephemera encountered by Moore in the homes of close family, relatives and friends’ parents. “With the phrase ‘English Domestic Interiors’, I’m acknowledging a difference, perhaps, in some vernacular that may have disappeared,” Moore considers, before laughing: “I could have even called it ‘English Interiors of the East Midlands,’ which would have been taking it even further, but again it’s an attempt at authenticity.”

The households captured here represent a departure from the scenes shown in Pictures from the Real World. “They’re from a slightly different set of domestic circumstances, and they reflect much more my own background than do the interiors drawn from Pictures from the Real World in terms of social class,” he explains. China ornaments and glassware are highlighted by Moore’s flashbulb, sat primly on dark wooden dressers against floral wallpaper and fringed lampshades. “I remember going to my grandparents’ homes and being so fascinated by what was on display,” he says. “It was an exploratory reorientation for myself using places that are quite familiar to me.”

Moore describes English Domestic Interiors as a still life project. Objects sit alone in rooms empty of their owners, hinting at who might occupy these spaces without ever revealing them. “I was looking at how environments can offer metaphor and simile for society,” Moore says. This attunement, not only to our immediate surroundings, but how they are shaped by broader circumstances, runs throughout his work. His skill lies in burrowing below the surface to reveal the intricate networks that connect us geographically, socially, economically and politically, like uncovering the inner workings of an electronic toy. 

This is rarely straightforward, and Moore continues to interrogate his own work and the stories he is telling. “People often feel that they need to take a conventional narrative form with documentary photography, and that can be restrictive,” he concludes. “Photography is much more interesting when it asks questions rather than tries to resolve a story.”

This article originally appeared in Scenic Views Issue 4, out now

David Moore’s work is featured in The English at Home: 20th Century Photographs from the Hyman Collection at the Centre for British Photography, London, until 28 May

David Moore, Connecting Works 1986-1994, is at Sion and Moore, London, until 27 May

Volodymyr Mateichuk, 19, Kolomyia

Kolomyia is a small city in western Ukraine with a population of around 60,000. My project, Reliable Home Front, shows the life of a home front city during a full-scale war with Russia. Constant air raid alerts and military funerals are intertwined with people’s daily lives. People are used to monitoring the news all the time. I took these photos in the eighth month of the war. The volunteer centres, which were overcrowded at the beginning of the conflict, were half-empty.

Krystyna Novykova, 20, Mariupol and Milan (Italy)

Before the war, I studied acting and directing in Kyiv. I am now working on a play in Milan. Cinema, theatre and photography coexist for me. I try to find balance between not limiting myself to only one thing and being focused and precise in what I do here and now. Sometimes I succeed.

The invasion changed time, space and the very form of existence for me forever. I’ve been in a phantasmagorical dream, where present and past intertwine. My feelings, body and memory are deformed. There’s a permanent state of tightness and suffocation. Printed photos are my only physical connection with Mariupol – my first love – now. They seem to be sewn into the skin. But my memory of the city is not distorted. On the contrary, it becomes even more clear and detailed every day. This project is an attempt to recreate the new reality, which perhaps I will never be able to get used to.

Tim Melnikov, 19, Odesa

Since the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I’ve been staying in Odesa and documenting city life in my project Odesa: Living with War. I wanted to show how the desire to live breaks through the realities of the bloody war, frequent shelling and depressive uncertainty.

For eight months of the war, Odesa has changed dramatically and acquired the features inherent to a front line city, although it is located 150 kilometres from the front line. In the summer, the city saw no tourist season because of mined beaches. Many civilian institutions, hospitals, schools and universities were provided with protective structures in case of shelling. 

Despite all of this, Odesa is alive, although it is not as vibrant as it was. Wartime Odesa is deserted and gloomy, but not broken.

Kateryna Boklan, 19, Kyiv and Plzeň, Czech Republic

I’m interested in analogue film photography. My objective is to implement a project that would make a difference in society. I took these pictures in Berlin in 2022. Through my photos, I try to remember things that really matter, about feelings, and about ourselves.

Should We Look Up to Adults? Hello, adults. There is a question: should we really look up to you? You ignored the mistakes of your ancestors. Well, this became our death sentence. We couldn’t bring our dreams to life. We didn’t have time to discover the world, but if we had… Do you think there would still be chaos? Would we steal, lie, destroy and kill in the future as you do now? Did we get you right? Sincerely yours, because we can’t be otherwise, children.

Ivan Samoilov, 20, Kharkiv

I’ve spent my whole life in Kharkiv and I’m staying here now. I study at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture and want to become a cinematographer. I’ve been interested in photography for five years now, and started shooting regularly two years ago. I’m interested in both documentary photography and video documentaries. I like to walk around the city, take pictures and create! I see my future in my hometown, in a peaceful Ukraine. 

Last summer, I got to go to North Saltivka for the first time, which is now the most war-stricken district in Kharkiv. I had never before seen such devastation. Only rescuers, old people, volunteers and homeless animals maintain some kind of life in the ruined, nearly destroyed city.

The central streets of Kharkiv are still recognisable, but a lot has changed: most establishments are closed or have been destroyed together with the buildings they were located in. Cultural life has descended to bomb shelters. You can attend poetry nights in a basement, chat with a few friends who have stayed in the city, but then a siren goes off and you have to look for the entrance to the nearest metro station in complete darkness.

Anna Pohorielova, 19, Kharkiv and Winterthur (Switzerland)

I’m a third-year student at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture. I took up fine art photography in 2021. I combine vernacular photography and documentary photos from Kharkiv, which I took in September 2022 during a temporary return to the city. In addition to self-portraits, the photos from the family album include my parents, grandparents, and sisters. The photo of a girl with a cloth on her head was taken two days before the start of the war. Later, Valeria, the heroine of this photo, became a volunteer and died.

I’ve fled Ukraine because of the invasion. I’m now living abroad. Six months ago, I felt too much at once, and it seemed I was too exhausted to focus and create. Odesa Photo Days saved me. For now, I’ve decided to focus on street photography. This is how I prefer to feel the world: rhythm, colours, voices and music.

Vladyslav Safronov, 19, Kyiv

I studied sociology, but left the university after the war started. I’m now at the Ukrainian Film School, studying to become a camera operator. I’ve been into photography since 2019, and in May 2022 became interested in fine-art photography. I try to apply a cinematographic approach to my shots.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed the lives of thousands of Ukrainians. I’m no exception. These events have forced me to rethink my attitude to the world, and I’ve decided to convey every stage I’ve gone through.

Kamila Karpenko, 17, Nizhyn

In my spare time, I perform on stage and play Mafia with friends. I like reading too. Remarque is my favourite author. I’m fascinated with his work. I feel related to some of his characters and their feelings. He wrote that “There are stars that disintegrated 10,000 light years ago, but they still shine today.” 

The Germans killed 6700 residents of the town of Koryukivka at the beginning of March 1943. A little girl and her family survived, but she still can’t forget this terrible episode of her life. Halyna Popova is an eyewitness of those events; she recalls the impudence of the military, people’s fear, confusion and panic, many bodies on the roads and the difficult path to freedom. 

Her mother saved the family by bringing children outside the fence, but there were many people left who didn’t make it. The whole town was on fire and ruined. It became lifeless. The time passed and people started returning and rebuilding their homes.

People now walk along the streets as they used to do in the past. Have they forgiven that cruelty? Will they be able to forgive later on? Most Ukrainians who are connected with the occupiers – whether through the territories, family ties, or the time they lived together – should also answer this question. 

 My pictures were taken in Nizhyn and Koryukivka in 2022. I’m trying to address forgiveness: how long can a person keep pondering an issue in order to let it go and make life easier? Will such a decision make it easier – or is it better to continue to think it over? 

Mykyta Bezus, 19, Kamianske and Kyiv

I study at the Faculty of law at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Originally from Kamianske, I live in Kyiv, though I’m originally from Kamianske. 

In our situation, it is difficult to predict how the next day will pass, let alone the next week. When we give up and refuse to live on, we make a priceless gift to those who expect this from us. Being strong and resistant means to thwart all enemy’s plans to destroy our life.

My series Dawn is about Ukrainian young people, their places of strength, important things and life after 24 February.

Marharyta Rubanenko, 21, Popasna and Toruń (Poland)

I am a photographer, art manager and student. I was born in Popasna, Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. In recent years, I have lived, studied and worked in Kharkiv. I was forced to move to Poland because of the war.

At the end of April, I received a photo from my neighbours’ friends, showing that the house where I had spent my childhood didn’t exist any more. A bunch of keys is all that is left.

I have no access to a rented flat in Kharkiv either. It’s still too dangerous to stay in the city because of shelling; people die every day there. Despite this, in the first months after moving to Poland, I couldn’t allow myself to take the keys to that flat out of my pocket. I always took them with me.

When the war forces you to leave your home to stay safe, taking your keys means a hope to return home as soon as possible. Unfortunately, now it becomes clear that many people will have nowhere to return to, because their homes are destroyed, or if otherwise, it’ll take a lot of time, until it’s safe to come back.

For my project, House Keys, I’ve collected the stories of people who can’t return home due to various reasons. They continue living with this, even smiling, despite what they have gone through, and carrying keys to their home. They want to come back one day.

Find out more about Odesa Photo Days Festival here

Matca is the only Vietnamese outlet specialising in contemporary photography. It takes the form of a website due to financial constraints, but also to make it internationally accessible. “From the beginning, it was clear to me that [the journal] had to be bilingual,” says Pham. “There is a lot of great work around but no opportunities to be seen outside of [our] personal bubbles.” Pham recruited photographer and writer Dao to join the team as managing editor and programme coordinator a few months after launch. In Vietnamese, Matca (‘Mă’t Cá’) means ‘Fisheye’: “the ultra wideangle lens so as to capture the bigger picture of Vietnam’s photography scene,” Dao explains. She has commissioned over 200 articles, including interviews with local photographers, and more practically focused pieces, discussing the benefits of enrolling on a residency programme, for example. Matca has built a strong, organic local following and attracted international attention from academics, curators and researchers.

“I think of what we do as mapping – locating photography practices in Vietnam, finding people, featuring their work and interviewing them,” says Dao. “[In Vietnam], personal projects have no outlet. Imagine you are a young, emerging photographer, and you’ve been shooting a project for a while. You look around and you see no opportunity to get further. Publishing a book is expensive; exhibitions are apparently only for very established artists… A photography career is so short-lived here. For us, as a tiny organisation with little resources, featuring these artists online was a way to keep a record of works and ideas that would otherwise be scattered.”

Education is one of Matca’s core pillars. In 2019, the organisation opened a physical space, allowing it to host regular workshops covering subjects such as how to edit a body of work, build a portfolio and write a CV. “People here don’t have access to that, we’re running in a completely different system,” says Pham.

The space functions as a gallery too, although it is officially registered as a coffee shop. According to Pham and Dao, independent organisations in Vietnam cannot legally register as galleries. “It’s a bigger issue with the legal system, because many art spaces in Vietnam aren’t registered – not as a gallery, a non-profit, or even a social enterprise,” Dao explains. This can be problematic when meeting the criteria for international grants. Some institutions will make an exception for Vietnam to ensure that informal organisations can apply.

Matca’s publishing imprint, Makét, arrived alongside the gallery as an “extension of our vision,” says Dao. They have published three books to date and are planning more. Their latest publication, Makét 02: From Here On Out, profiles four emerging Vietnamese artists: Binh Dang, Nguyen Duy Tuan, Nguyen Dinh Phong and Thi My Lien Nguyen.

Publishing is a challenging business, but it is made even harder in Vietnam due to censorship laws. In order to produce and freely distribute a book, makers must obtain two types of permit – a printing permit and a distribution permit – which can only be issued by state-owned publishing houses. Some individuals choose to self-print small runs of zines or hand-made books, but this can be a risk. “We have to compromise a lot,” says Pham. “With the publishing house, the printers and the authorities. That’s something we need to keep in mind from the beginning.” For Vietnamese practitioners, acts of self-censorship often happen at the genesis of a project: “We know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work,” says Pham. Even so, the system can still be unpredictable. Binh Dang’s work, for example – which depicts animals suspended in jars of rice wine [above] – was almost censored due to it promoting the consumption of alcohol.

When we speak again in early November, it is a relief to hear that Pham and Dao have successfully rehomed the 60kg of photobooks to Hanoi. These will provide reference material for the organisation’s workshops and Pham’s and Dao’s personal practices. Despite the restrictions, the organisation has already achieved so much, filling the gaps in education and inspiration for future generations of Vietnamese artists. But as detailed in an open letter on its website: “Matca is not just a still image, Matca is a long story that is being told. We hope that you will also accept and believe in what we believe in and join us in the challenging but equally exciting journey ahead.”

matca.vn
ha-dao.com
linh-pham.com

Radchenko began working on a project over a decade ago, but was forced to start again when her computer and hard drive were stolen in 2016. In 2019, she returned to Zhovti Vody and unexpectedly, the focus of the work changed. “I noticed that the city is still alive. It’s comfortable, small and calm,” she says. “I was surprised that people my age had chosen to stay to work and develop the place they were living in, rather than move to bigger cities… This is a small drop in the ocean compared to the wider population. But people are trying to build something good from the ruins.”

Her ongoing project, then, is a portrait of the city as it is today, and the people working to place it back on the map. Radchenko is also a curator, researcher and the director of Odesa Photo Days, and the series draws heavily on historical archives for context.

“It’s not possible to tell a story without knowing about the past,” she explains. “I’m trying to understand the connection between the past and future. From the utopian city built on the heavy uranium industry, to what it is today and how it has changed over time.”

Visibility and invisibility are important and recurring themes, from the coded name of Mailbox 28 to the secrets kept from local citizens. Indeed, traces of radiation, left behind after decades of mining, still pollute the surrounding soil and water. “It’s difficult to solve, radiation spreads fast and you can’t see it,” says Radchenko. “We have our doubts, but we can’t leave our country. Despite it bringing many problems – cancer is the second leading cause of death in Ukraine – we accept it and move on.”

The intangibility of the problem is perhaps another reason why the impetus to find solutions has fallen by the wayside – environmental hazards become less of a priority when people are fighting to survive air strikes and bombs.

The current war began when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. The major attack earlier this year, on 24 February, shifted Ukraine’s focus to defence once again. Russia’s high-risk targeting of the nuclear power plants is a haunting echo of the past. “For a long time, Russia used the territory of Ukraine to extract uranium for the development of nuclear weaponry,” says Radchenko. “Now, the nuclear plants in Ukraine and Russia’s nuclear weapons are being used to blackmail Ukraine and the rest of the world. We are entering into a new chapter in this story.”

@radchenko_ua

“I think it is especially hard for the creative people to become parents and lose the passion for everything else for a while. The shift of identity and the strength of energy to create.”

Titled Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back, published by Trolley Books, the book celebrates the need for an honest conversation surrounding the messiness and contradiction that comes with becoming a mother. It rallies against the expectation to constantly maintain an unrealistic vision of strength, joy, and empowerment before, during and after pregnancy. “In the midst of all the vulnerability, the pain, the tiredness and mess, they tell you: ‘Remember to stay desirable too, so your partner sees the same woman he fell in love with.’ How should I stay mysterious? I’m bleeding, leaking.” 

As an artist, Galdi felt an immense shift in identity when she had her baby. She gained a new persona, with new responsibilities, pulling her away from a practice of prolific creativity. “I think it is especially hard for the creative people to become parents and lose the passion for everything else for a while,” she says. “The shift of identity and the strength of energy to create.” She wants to normalise these experiences, so that mothers never feel that they are failing, and are able to enjoy the early precious moments with their newborns without the added pressure of productivity. The book creates a space where that vulnerability can be shared.

“I’m not the first one to talk about it, but for some reason my voice is having a moment,” says Galdi. “And I’m really happy that it is. No one tells you how to do it the right way. Even though I had an incredible support system around me, you’re really alone when this happens. You can’t prepare for [motherhood], however much you read.”

With a foreword written by friend and mothering companion, Charlotte Jansen, the book is just larger than A6 in size with an exposed spine. Designed by Emma Scott-Child, the images are printed on an array of textured paper stocks. “The size of it is meant to fit in a woman’s bag,” Galdi explains. “I want it to be like a Bible that you can pass down to your best friend, to your daughter. Like a codex for mothers and parents.”

“Irony is a way of surviving and coping with reality. Every human being has a mother. So when you look at this book, you will know how much your parents have done for you.”

As I became acquainted with Galdi’s book, I showed it to my sister-in-law, who has two small children aged three and five. As she turned the pages, every so often she let out a subtle exhale and nodded her head in compassion and understanding. She repeats the words, “Where is my village” written in red marker somewhere in the middle. She also smiles, saying: “Yes, this is it,” pointing to the image of Galdi’s baby crawling towards her as she sits on the loo, and the overflowing, pooey nappy, and the baby dragging itself out of the frame leaving behind a snail-trail of a pee stain on the bed sheet.

The use of candid humour and creativity is an important part of the storytelling. It is the giggle, and the sigh that follows the long, reassuring hug. “Irony is a way of surviving and coping with reality,” says Galdi. “Every human being has a mother. So when you look at this book, you will know how much your parents have done for you.”

Galdi is in the midst of a tour of book launches around Europe. The Hungarian artist has already held events at Unseen Amsterdam with Erika Deak Gallery, TJ Boulting in London, BOP in Bristol and the Martin Parr Foundation. This weekend, she will also be presenting her book at Paris Photo on 12 November, at the TJ Boulting booth, and at Rupture et Associes (Paris) on 10 November.

Our conversation turns to the question of success and timing. The images in the book were made six years ago. Yet, back then, the audience that so enthusiastically receives it today was not as open to the idea. “In the beginning I was told, it’s just temporary, you’ll get over it, and to carry on with making ‘art’,” she recalls. Perhaps it is due to a change in attitude and openness that followed the Covid-19 lockdown, that people speak more openly about difficult, personal experiences. “[The pandemic] made people more vulnerable and more honest, maybe. Many people resonate with my book, whether they have children or not.” Perhaps it is a sign of an expanding space where motherhood and childbirth is seen for all its complexity, without an unnecessary, one-dimensional romanticisation of the experience. Or, that more people are willing to listen. 

“My dream for this book is to show people it’s ok and to help them feel that they’re not alone.”

So is this success, a breakthrough? For Galdi, it is important for the book to be seen in traditional spaces like galleries and museum shops; she hopes that she can show the work as an interactive exhibition soon. She believes that only through introducing it into a wider archive, will the book’s message be validated and have a chance at making a valuable contribution to the artistic canon, and widespread sentiment and education. “If I could print another million copies I would send this book to every school in all the world. A book in every library,” she says.

Ultimately, though, the book has a clear purpose. “If my book raises conversations and questions people’s certainty about what they think is right or not… For every time this book made someone smile, I would be so happy. My dream for this book is to show people it’s ok and to help them feel that they’re not alone.” She adds: “I want to see it on a nightstand. My friend texted me to say that she fell asleep with the book. That’s what I want.”

Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared but now I’m Back by Andi Galdi is published by Trolley Books, with a foreword by Charlotte Jansen.

The photographer will be signing copies of the book at Rupture e Associes, Paris on 10 November and the TJ Boulting booth, Paris Photo, on 12 November

For all that it observes life, Hardy’s art is not one of documentary but of storytelling, discreetly blending the candid with the composed. Images are conjured from the characters and objects in her orbit, tableaus arranged from the “reasons and ingredients that promote making a picture”. Often a composition would repeat itself in her mind – a field near her Suffolk home “packed with red poppies”, for example – moving her to set out with steadfast “intention and clarity” with her camera. But there is always a tension, a “schism… a bit of a tearing”, in navigating her tandem role as observer and participant. “If you were a good mother you’d be sitting down and reading a story,” she says. “I was always trying to meld the two… Trying to find a balance that is never findable.” 

It is a balancing act not unlike the dance of family life itself, wavering between the quotidian and the surreal. And indeed, the element of the unexpected is often helpful, she reveals: “I’m only ever really having a go.” But first and foremost, there is conscious endeavour. “I’m not interested in looking at or making pictures that don’t pose a narrative or invite me as a viewer to be curious”, she insists. And even revisiting contact sheets from 20 years ago, her instinct for what constitutes a successful image is unfaltering. “If it’s congruent with your intention, then that’s it”, she says. “Whatever the creative output is – when it works, it works – and as the creator you have to have some agency over that”. 

Permissions deals with the seasons of life. We encounter inky swims and winter flu, we feel the crackle of harvested wheat under foot, the frost on the windscreen. Tomatoes ripen on a sill, berries are picked and pricked, children climb the walls. Time itself warps in the book. Chapters of life are elided, others ratcheted-forward, in the way that memory meanders. In some chapters, images seem to carry the weight of an entire epoch, the breadth of the human condition, while others have a lightness of being that enables them to flicker and fade like fireflies.

Occasionally, the camera is offstage, attentive instead of incidental table-top arrangements and weather-filled landscapes – elements both integral to, yet out of kilter with the temporality of home. Yet “in each, there’s a backstory”, Hardy insists: goggles on the edge of a pool, a cut finger in a doorway, a phonecall on the lawn. Try not to Blink [below] is a spectral confrontation of an image, Hardy’s daughter veiled in white, eyes glazing over in mimicry of the camera’s dulcet focus. It is a photograph that approaches slow motion. Three pages on, the same child is alert, dynamic, insect-like on the floor, absorbed in a game of cards. She is framed not by the steely black of a classic portrait, but backlit with the lights of a living room. And instead of a veil, white curtains flank her figure. Childhood innocence in two frames. “I didn’t make them to share,” Hardy says of her pictures. “They are genuinely personal”. 

“To learn to do a thing, to do it for one of life’s first times is to be unnatural in the activity”, writes Alice Zoo (photographer, writer, and BJP contributor) in the book’s essay. “It is to be a pretender, a performer, as though experimenting with the possible bounds of a gesture, trying it on for size”. Permissions may be Hardy’s first book-making endeavour, but there is nothing remotely naive or performative about its presentation. Instead, there is an unselfconsciousness which yields a fluency to its pages. It was a process of gentle and patient distillation, Hardy describes, “like a bunch of stuff shaking up in a jar, slowly clearly”. 

This spirit rises to the surface most clearly in Hardy’s series of floral still lifes, each titled in Latin, serving as the book’s eight chapter headings. “Eight is an amazing number energetically”, Hardy says. Tulips, Fritillaries, hellebores – all blooms Hardy herself had nurtured and adored, photographed during her last spring in the house. They are photographed splayed on the stone kitchen counter, the central axis to her role in the home, bearing all the marks of its use. It was a “very profound” endeavour, she says. “A real marking of time. A eulogy. I let them lie there so they wilted… It became quite a solemn process”. 

Rhythm, texture and tone are instinctual to Hardy. She is a master of light and colour, coaxing these elements onto the pictorial surface in the way she does with her human subjects – with tenderness and optimism. Her vision comes through the prism of a student of art history, and as an ardent follower of “almost exclusively female photographers” during her early 20s of living in Paris. She cites Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, Nan Goldin, and Tina Barney among her biggest inspirations. “I think it’s really hard to make work in a vacuum without any energetic influences”, she says. “In order for a candle flame to light, there’s got to be oxygen–- the oxygen of the world around, the people around bring it to life”. Yet, in spite of these external forces, Permissions refrains from falling into step with any entrenched mythologies of ‘home’, or ‘family’ or ‘motherhood’. Nostalgia is guarded with an intimacy and honesty that approaches the confessional. “I learned so much about letting go, about non-attachment, about a certain freedom”, she says. “But in order to let go, you have to be holding on first”. 

For all its gravity of emotion – grief spliced through with joy – Permissions settles in one’s lap like a child curling up after a meal. It offers a gentle illumination, a loving warmth, but with a glow that lingers long after the event, reverberating into dark corners. Its spirit lies in this gesture as much as its objectivity – in the act of staying until the end, soaking up the last warmth of the candle after the wick has burnt out. It is then that we are given the permission to leave. 

Permissions by Emma Hardy is published by GOST Books.

The photographer will be signing copies of the book at Polycopies, Paris at 7pm on 11 November 2022.

An exhibition of the project will be on display at 10 14 Gallery, London from 01 December 2022 to 27 January 2023.

The sequencing of Robinson’s texts was inspired by off-kilter hip-hop and dub rhythms intrinsic to Black creative expression, and the visual tempo conveys a restlessness that matches the duo’s roving mission. While exploring the country and the regional specificities affecting Black communities, Pitts recalled Paul Graham’s A1: The Great North Road (Mack, 1983), in which Graham uses the main road artery bisecting the country as a documentary thread. “We needed to get out of London, because that’s the story that keeps getting told,” Pitts remarks. Instead, “You have the story of the empire: places like Plymouth and Bristol, where we saw the toppling of the [Edward] Colston statue. You have Liverpool, which was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Then you have places like Dover, which is opposite Calais, where you hear stories of new arrivals of asylum seekers drowning on that crossing, that kind of trauma.”

Pitts let the itinerary of the trip shape the narrative: “Sometimes there are images in the book that aren’t of much, but they capture an echo of history.” He cites George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), in which the author examines the working-class experience, and sociologist Paul Gilroy, who is behind the book The Black Atlantic (1993) about the unregulated maritime space between land masses.

Pitts frames his project as a kind of antithesis to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, as narratives that come from focusing only on heightened moments do not represent quotidian experience. To Pitts, rethinking this skewed sense of what to immortalise is as pertinent to social history as it is to the vernacular family album. “Ultimately, we don’t spend our whole lives at weddings and holidays,” Pitts says, despite the fact that these are the moments many tend to chronicle.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, he made his own family’s archives into a revisionist project. “My mum – thank God! – kept every negative of every photograph I’ve ever taken. When I was looking through them, I thought, ‘This is where the interesting stuff is.’ One-off moments of success are important, too, but everyday moments tell you more about what life is really like for a community, for a family.”  

“I wanted to create conditions under which a Black or working-class community could feel at home.”

“I keep everything,” Pitts laughs. “There’s so many terrible photographs in my archive. It’s about seven terabytes, and maybe only 3 per cent of it is usable. But it’s amazing how, as the years go by, I find new things. What I thought was a terrible image that just didn’t work, suddenly it’s like, ‘Actually, yeah.’ You see it in a new light.” As circumstances change, how one valorises images changes in tandem. Different stories can be extracted from the same materials, and one can re-evaluate what is considered worthy.

A companion exhibition to the book is on show at Graves Gallery in Sheffield – Pitts’ hometown – until 24 December, and will migrate to Stills in Edinburgh in spring 2023. The exhibition was commissioned by Photoworks for the inaugural Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship. “I wanted to create conditions under which a Black or working-class community could feel at home,” Pitts says. “It’s important to take all these semiotic visuals and atmospheres and think, ‘How do I welcome people into this space?’” Pitts’ family helped bring the exhibition to life: his sister made a playlist from a local pirate radio station and a table for people to sit at, peppered with maps and family albums. His cousin constructed a model of Pitts’ childhood home; his niece and her friends helped with production. Creating a feeling of respite was important, and Pitts wants viewers to find resonance in his images beyond the artistic effort that brought them about. Appreciative visitors have contacted him to say: ‘I was looking through your family albums, and I remembered having wallpaper like that’. “Those little touches,” says Pitts, “mean everything to me.”

johnypitts.com

Home is Not a Place by Johny Pitts and Roger Robinson is published by Harper Collins

The exhibition by Johny Pitts, commissioned by Photoworks for the inaugural Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship is exhibited at Graves Gallery, Sheffield Museums from 11 August – 24 December 2022 and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh 09 March – 10 June 2023.

“Though Chris’ major series were achieved during an intense decade of production, it is telling that even three decades later he was in touch with, and fondly received by those who populated his pictures.”

As a result, Grant and Marshall Grant were given access to Killip’s archive and began selecting work for the retrospective. Grant was also asked to write several in-depth texts and essays for the book, offering detailed insight into Killip’s practice. Known for his work in Britain in the 1980s, as the country underwent a period of deindustrialisation, Killip was a strong proponent of slow photography, and was famed for his ability to integrate into the communities he was documenting, earning their trust over long periods of time. “His commitment to both the region and communities he photographed is singular in the medium,” says Grant. “Though Chris’ major series were achieved during an intense decade of production, it is telling that even three decades later he was in touch with, and fondly received by those who populated his pictures.”

The people in question belonged to communities all around Britain, but it was Killip’s work with groups in the north of England that won him widespread acclaim. His book In Flagrante (1988) is often considered the most important photographic study of the country in the 80s, and contains some of Killip’s most powerful images. His documentation of working-class communities in the north, shown in an unflinching yet sympathetic manner, revealed in detail the devastating impact deindustrialisation was having on this forgotten section of society. Another of his series, titled Skinningrove, exhibited a similar approach in its study of a small fishing village in North Yorkshire, and Grant cites this body of work as his favourite of Killip’s: “For me, the Skinningrove series has an attachment with both the land and people that has never been bettered. It also, like some of the other series, conveys so much about how Chris was able to become trusted in challenging circumstances. In looking at the series in full, we become as much aware of Chris as a person as we do a photographer.”

For Grant and Marshall Grant, the more personal sides of Killip’s story share equal importance with his photographic legacy. Beyond his own work in the medium, he was also known and respected as an educator. Between 1991 and 2017, he served at Harvard University as a professor of visual and environmental studies, where he taught and came into contact with several prolific names in the photography world. One such figure was American photographer Gregory Halpern, who studied under Killip and recalls this formative experience in one of the book’s essays. He writes: “My notion of being a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images. Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography.”

This desire to look beyond the surface and to ask the difficult questions is surely one of the defining aspects of Killip’s legacy – both in terms of his work as a photographer, and as a teacher. It is evident in many of the series presented in the exhibition and the book, and is largely why these photographs remain relevant decades after they were taken. Not only are there many parallels between the difficulties faced by disadvantaged communities then and now, but, as Grant attests to, the power of Killip’s photography during that time continues to offer hope in what is a particularly dark period for Britain and the rest of the world: “At a moment of fracture, the humanity in his work might bring solace and strength.”

Chris Killip, retrospective is on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London from 07 October 2022 to 19 February 2023. The accompanying book, Chris Killip, is published by Thames & Hudson on 20 October 2022.

This Hurts has been ongoing and evolving since Blue first started taking photographs. The 24 year old artist was born and raised in Derry, and now lives in Belfast. She grew up in a creative family; her grandfather and father are painters, and her mother was into crafts. “I was used to having a hand in every basket, like textiles, printing, and traditional media,” she says. 

At 16, Blue went straight to art college, where she continued experimenting with different mediums like screenprinting and video. These years were crucial – it was when she met her wife, and the photographer Meghan Doherty. “[Meghan] opened up this other world of photography, as a way of documenting what’s happening right in front of you,” says Blue. “She was a real catalyst for me finding my footing as a photographer.” In comparison to painting, photography felt like a “quick media”, and the dark room satisfied Blue’s disposition towards more tactile mediums.

 At the beginning, This Hurts  was about drag performers. Blue was drawn to the “performance of masking” in relation to her own experience, and “the general Northern Irish experience of trying to put on a brave face and get on with it.” “For me, drag was the queer version of that,” she says. 

But the more Blue got into the drag scene, the more she felt discluded as a lesbian woman. Naturally, she began to move away from this subject, and started shooting her own life. This came at a time when she was discovering work by artists like Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun, and Barbara Kruger. She also came out as gay, and against a backdrop of a history of conflict, “it all just turned into this web of making and manipulating and experimenting”.

What interests Blue is the evanescence of youth, feelings, and life itself – reflected in the electric blues, neon pinks, and deep blacks that rush through her sweeping set of images. The project’s title, This Hurts, is also a reference to this fleeting-ness, as well as the discordance that  characterised her upbringing. “I’ve met some really amazing people, and I’ve also lost some really close people. Almost immediately, as every good turn was happening, something catastrophic was happening at the same time,” she says. “It also harks back to growing up in Northern Ireland, and just always expecting the rug to be swept from underneath you for no reason. It’s just a built-in part of your brain.”

As a child, Blue’s parents barely spoke of The Troubles. “They didn’t want to remember that history,” she explains. “There were huge patches missing out of the giant quilt work that was the story of my parents’ and their parents’ heritage.” When she met her wife, who grew up in Belfast, Blue realised how open other families were about the conflict. “All of a sudden the floodgates were open,” she says. “It is traumatising, but I think it’s healthier to speak about it, rather than to pretend and move on.”

Blue’s images feel raw and honest, but they also have an unpredictable energy. “[The project is] a multi-conceptual, personal exploration. It’s just all about not knowing,” she says. “It’s about growing up with a muddled past, a muddled present, and a muddled future, and just trying to make artwork within that.”

This Hurts by Audrey Blue is on show at Seen Fifteen in Peckham, London, from 07-29 October 2022.

This article was updated on 27 February 2023 with the artist’s new name, Audrey Blue, where previously we referred to them as Audrey Gillespie. 

Selected by Merve Arkunlar, editor of 212 Magazine, we profile the work of Ekin Özbiçer, Ci Demi, Oğulcan Arslan and Kıvılcım S Güngörün

Introduction by Merve Arkunlar

Turkish director and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s depictions of my homeland are a masterclass in local, visual storytelling. His auteur films and the panoramic photographs collected in his book Turkey Cinemascope (2015) capture the authentic delicacy of his narrative. Ceylan’s words also resonate. During his acceptance speech for the Best Director award for Three Monkeys at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, he described Turkey as “my lonely and beautiful country”. 

Although 15 years have passed, Ceylan’s words remain poignant. In the last two decades, Turkey has experienced many political and social hardships. The country’s beauty is still present, but not as it used to be, with many precious facets such as our heritage, individuality and diversity being misunderstood and often neglected. Nevertheless the Turkish photography scene is thriving. I believe that we are living in the most proactive era of local photographic history. The cities are brimming with eager, emerging photographers. I am constantly discovering and meeting new image-makers pursuing personal stories while still connecting their practice to their home. 

Here, we highlight four photographers who are contributing to the contemporary, sociocultural scene – first published in a special feature in the Tradition & Identity issue of British Journal of Photography.