Some projects come to photographer's with specific intent, a pre-planned, creative decision to create a themed body of work over a short or long period of time. This project came to me by a chance, of sorts. A Framelines Community meet in London saw the group head to the famous King's Cross located Vintage Market. Not only was this my first time partaking in a Framelines meet up, but it was my maiden voyage into the world of this Vintage Market. And what a playground it was. A nominal entry fee sends you through an invisible time warp, pulling you from the current day to the early decades of the 1900s.
Immediately feeling a bystander in some kind of interactive play, where characters have their roles and interact with their props with masterful authenticity, you're overwhelmed in the best possible way. As a photographer, I felt like someone has opened up a movie set for public viewing and so I set to work.
There was much to document for this mini-project, and maybe too much, if that's possible. It would have been easy to snap away, every stall a set from years gone by, every patron a personality, a leading role in a film from the Golden Age, but doing so would lose the consideration this deserved. So I took a beat. Took a moment. To focus, to assess. To consider what I wanted to capture. The answer was a mixture of wanting to capture the character, that feeling, of the surroundings while ensuring it didn't miss the small details that added so much.
I go through stages whereby I thoroughly enjoy zoning in on the small details of life and I appreciate the work of others who do the same. Slender fingers raising a smoking cigarette to their mouth, the turn of a high heel or on this occasion, a pair of cherry earrings.
There was much to document for this mini-project, and maybe too much, if that's possible. It would have been easy to snap away, every stall a set from years gone by, every patron a personality, a leading role in a film from the Golden Age, but doing so would lose the consideration this deserved. So I took a beat. Took a moment. To focus, to assess. To consider what I wanted to capture. The answer was a mixture of wanting to capture the character, that feeling, of the surroundings while ensuring it didn't miss the small details that added so much.
I go through stages whereby I thoroughly enjoy zoning in on the small details of life and I appreciate the work of others who do the same. Slender fingers raising a smoking cigarette to their mouth, the turn of a high heel or on this occasion, a pair of cherry earrings.
And not only that, but they give an ambience to Soho that is conflicting and contradictory. They’re futuristic and modern and yet pull me back in to scenes of the1920s film noir time. This feeling is both enthralling and unsettling, as I hover between the two worlds, but it makes for stories and moments that illustrate the sort of photography I like to make: making the everyday into movie stills and bringing a feeling of the past to the streets of the present day. Soho at night for me acts as a purposefully constructed time-capsule, like a movie set for a film from a time long gone: the filming has wrapped, the director has shouted cut and the actors and the extras and the crew pile in for their after party: the two timelines collide and create magic.
