THE POLITICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY – a closer look at some photographs I have taken
A classy, sophisticated, upper-class lady decked out in her finest fur, smoking her cigarette while quietly sipping on red. A common trope yet, this is the feeling one might pick up when glancing at this photo. The truth really is that this woman, “Aliona”, is indeed smoking on her Lithuanian cigarettes that her babushka gave to her, was actually gossiping to me about how she had just found out in the toilets prior to our conversation, that the guy she used to causally see had slept with her best friend, while having a pint at the local, in Finsbury Park.
What I mean is that photography can be deceitful, it reminds me of politics. Having multiple layers that you believe you understand at the first instance, but it lies to you through the face of beauty. These two pictures have had me in a trance from the moment I took them. The ambiguity of the flash from the polaroid, forming a black background which gives nothing away to the location which this was taken, allowing us as the viewer to make up scenarios of where this photo is placed. I was captivated by the desperation, passionate expression channelled through the second photo, through the position of the hand in mid conversation. The curling of the fingertips, the loose grasp of the cigarette positioned in a way that it feels like it is part of the hand, as she savours every smoke. Beauty, betrayal, and femininity is the key essence of these photographs.
THE HAT GIFTED TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE
Found stabbed by the gates of Buckingham Palace, this ominous black hat showcased a sense of mourning, aloneness, and loss. It seemed fitting for the sombre mood one feels by Buckingham Palace with the recent loss of our late queen. It raised a range of questions, I wondered how did it get there? Did someone find it an purposely place it there? Did someone loose it? Was it a drunken activity by a passer? Who did the hat belong to?
'PUSSY NONCE' -
An honest mistake caused by flashback from the polaroid which rubbed out the overall commentary of the original message and formulates a crude result.
AT THE GATES OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE
So much distance between me and the Palace, the building felt godly, something from another world, it is something that I might never go in or experience. To me this photograph captured the essence of the poverty gap between us and them.