This commission is part of the Lambeth Town Hall Arts Programme and involved creating a set of portraits representing leadership in the borough today.
In 1903 a set of civic portraits were created of the borough leaders, which hang in the Town Hall, this commission is to reference the original portraits while representing the diversity that make up leadership in the borough today.
Participants were selected and were interviewed to establish what they think leadership is and how they demonstrate it, each person was photographed at their place of work, sitting in the same chair, a modern interpretation of a Victorian 'wingback' in reference to the original Civic Portraits. The output was to be eight portraits that show the various leaders in such a way as to express the person’s character or role, and demonstrating as a group some of the diversity that constitutes the borough of Lambeth today.
The first lockdown of 2020 halted the project and, a year later, I was approached to complete the work - rather than continuing on the same path I chose to widen the brief and photograph people who had worked through the pandemic and been directly impacted by it: King's Hospital; Lambeth Department of Public Health; Respeito Domestic Abuse Charity; Spiritual Leaders.
The later portraits were all shot in black and white in studio setting, but still the same chair - the difference in style in the photographs serving as a recognition of the pandemic.
The commission is supported by Lambeth Town Hall Arts Program and Photofusion (www.photofusion.org)
