“…that’s all there is. And that’s all we ever know about anybody….light on surface.”
Gary Winogrand.

The sky is white and without texture on a flat and grey morning in August that is given life only by the sight of a stranger who walks somewhere off in the distance of Rookery Road. Why my eyes are drawn to this figure, I’m not sure, but I methodically follow their slow drudging gait until it reaches the entrance to Antrobus Road and then they are gone.

Beyond the bricks of our built environments it is the mental construct of community, both real and imagined, that matters most Notions of community then, of belonging and of course of otherness, are drawn and experienced upon the hidden landscape of our emotions and the ability of our minds to make these feelings real.

This is a series of works (film, photography and text) commisioned by Multistory, the Arts Council and Urnab Living that explores Handsworth and Lozells in Birmingham but also the notion of community - both in terms of the identities within, but also of the identities imposed upon them. It is a work then that explores the connection between the imaginative geography of landscape and the ‘imagined community’ (Benedict Anderson, 1983).

The individuals within these images are all open to interpretation and as such become a series of tableaux that reveals more about us - and our stereotypical perceptions, of them - than the individual under scrutiny.

Whilst our worlds are ones of our making, they are also one’s projected upon us by others. In this sense, there is not one community of Handsworth and Lozells but a multitude of alternate realities, all of them real and all of them imagined and - of course, all of them existing upon the unseen plane of the hidden landscape.

We are all connected and yet we are all separate. Whilst we look it is impossible to truly see the unknown others around us. As like us they find themselves posited between mind and corporeality; between the physicality of their existence and the individual they and we think they are. Yet, in the end of course, ultimately, they like us will always be made real by how others choose to read the light upon their surface.

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Black and white images have always held a special interest for me.  It’s what I exclusively shot for quite awhile and something that I could never envisage working outside of.  Now, when I look at most black and white images - mainly those I’ve shot - I can’t help but thinking how would this look in colour?

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At the beginning of the year Geese Theatre began a series of workshops with an organisation in Birmingham, England called Mothers in Pain.

The group are made up of those who have lost their children to violent crime and the sessions were designed to help the group develop and share their feelings in order to help facilitate the making of a film that would share their experiences to the world.

These are only a brief look at what perhaps cannot be fully explained through images - the vacuum left in the wake of a child’s passing and the knowledge that for them all of their tomorrows’ are gone.

Images can be viewed here: www.writtenbylight.com

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One day in Cape Town a man came up to me and told me that the next day he was going to set an ambush for the police and kill as many as he could.  He was angry and the sun was hot after he and his fellow squatter camp settlers had been dispersed by force by the police.  He informed that he would set an ambush at the crossroad the next day and I listened to what I thought was a man venting his frustrations to a stranger with a camera.

The next evening I watched the news, without a thought for the previous day’s encounter, when the news presenter began to detail the murder of two policemen at the very same crossroads.  They had been ambushed and each one shot dead. Something happens when people are being photographed, when they agree to enter into the transitory relationship with you and the camera.  They trust you.  They trust a complete stranger and tell you things about their lives that they would never say to another stranger whom they have just met.

In a current ongoing work the people whom I’m photographing trust me enough to discuss matters that, within the eyes of the law, would be deemed as acts of criminality that could see them incarcerated.

But this of course raises a series of complex moral questions.  There is alas, no photographer - subject confidentiality code ingrained into the law for photographers but if your subject thought that you were going to be a ‘snitch’ they wouldn’t let you into their worlds…and perhaps might even take measures to punish you for your indiscretions.   But then again so might the local constabulary if you have knowledge that could impact upon their conviction rates. You walk the wire and hope not to fall off and you photograph people in ways in which their identities aren’t revealed. It’s easy to say that you simply tell the story that presents itself to you.  But of course with a long term period of observation where ‘bonds’ have been made with individuals you may indeed want to tell the story but not in ways which hurt those who have been so kind and forthcoming of their time and hospitality.  Even if they are indeed responsible for their own actions and you are simply reporting them.  But of course if you are on a foreign assignment and these individuals have no way of finding you…and you have no real bonds with them it’s easy to tell the story as it is – regardless of the consequences for them.  If on the other hand people know where you live…there are other considerations on how you tell the story….which perhaps are underpinned by thoughts of punishment beatings…or prison food.

Neither of which are good for one’s health.

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