First group tutorial session…

Today we had tutorial sessions in small groups in which we each took an image that would inform/inspire/shape our project. I had printed out one of Rob Evans’ images in readiness, but that was before I had discovered John Londei’s book. I’d planned this morning to present the whole book as my inspiration, but at the last minute thought I should show one image so used his image of a cobbler on the grounds that the cobbler in Stevenage is one of the people I’d really hope to be able to use in my project. Before showing the book and the cobbler, I did briefly outline my idea.

The point of the group tutorial was to encourage some discussion and elicit ideas from the group of eight or so classmates and one tutor, and we had a good discussion about the merits or otherwise of my thoughts so far. One classmate took a few notes of the discussion, so here’s the bullet points they noted down, with what I can remember of the discussion:

• Locality – personal connection but limited
  I think this simply refers to my outline of the project, that it is my own connection with Stevenage that sets the scope of the project, but inherently limits it, too.
• Venture from above, expand project
  One classmate thought I was (ironically!)  staying in my comfort zone by shooting in Stevenage rather than beyond, and indeed there are many more beautiful in other local towns like Hitchin and St Albans. Of course there are. But in my mind the whole point of this is to document my home town. It’s my own connection with Stevenage that drives this project. If it goes well, I said, maybe I could expand it later.
• Possible changes; lighting (do you need to change?)
  I can’t really recall what this refers to! Oops. I had mentioned the need to analyse the lighting and approach each location individually as no two shops will be the same.
• Have shopkeeper in background
  This was following a discussion of whether or not particular shopkeepers will want to get involved. Someone suggested I could perhaps persuade some by having them ‘working in the background’ rather than featured as a portrait.
• Complete High Street
  Following on from the above, a couple of people thought I should aim to somehow record the ‘whole’ High Street, so if there are shopkeepers who don’t want to be featured, I’d need to have some wide shots showing their shops in relation to the surroundings and so on.
• Photograph shops from outside
  …which leads neatly to this one. Flicking through John Londei as we chatted, I realised for the first time just how many of his were shot outside the shops, with the staff posing in the doorway. It’s more than the internal shots. I think I overall prefer the internal shots, and certainly that’s what I first envisaged, there is undoubtedly something lovely about the context that the exterior shots give, when you can see the type of building and the signage. Perhaps a mixed appraoch might be useful, and could be dictated by the shop.
• Don’t just pick pretty shops!
  This was part of a discussion about whether to include the likes of Costa and Tesco, or solely focus on the small independents. I certainly hadn’t planned to make ‘pretty’ one my criteria.
• Link yourself to the work
  This was related to my own connection to Stevenage, and my approach to potential subjects. I’ll certainly, when explaining the plans to the shopkeepers, want to say that I’m a local photographer who’s known and loved the High Street all my life and want to record it.
• Zoe Leonard, Deutsche Börse Photography prize 2010
  Our tutor Michael Heilgemeir suggested I should look at the work of Zoe Leonard, who was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2010 for her project “analogue” which was based on shopfronts. I’ve had a quick look, and that will have to be the subject of a whole other entry here.
• Linking photographic approach with work
  This stems from a technical discussion, in particular relating to taking an analogue approach. John Londei’s series were all shot on an 8″ x 10″ plate camera, and he talks about this being reflective of the shops he was photographing being something from a bygone era.  Zoe Leonard, photographing 25 years later than Londei, also chose to shoot analogue for similar reasons. Whilst I can see the connection, I’m not planning to go this route. My confidence with lighting and exposures isn’t sufficient (yet?!) to shoot a project like this without the ability to check what I’m doing as I go along, so it will be a digital shoot for me.
• Do you incude chains?
  I’ve mentioned this above. It’s still a matter needing some thought. My instinct is mixed here. Waitrose has been on the High Street throughout my life and feels like part of the community as a result. Tesco opened a small branch a couple of years ago and still feels like an intrusion. I’d happily include Waitrose, but reluctantly Tesco. This feels wrong, like I’m making a moral decision about what should be in the High Street rather than documenting what is. Of course there is also a practical issue involved in including the chains: I’d imagine it nigh on impossible to get permission to shoot in Tesco, compared with, say, “The Florist on the Green”.  And if it’s about people, which in my mind it is, who should be included in the chains? It’s not like they’ve made the shops their own, reflecting their own personality.
• Showing change in personal connection between big changes and small businesses
  Follows on from previous point. Could I find a way to represent the change from the personal, individual service you get from an independent shopkeeper owning their own shop and knowing their customers, to the ‘disconnected’ service more typical of an employee of a big chain.
• Document facts of High Street (types of businesses, numbers, etc.)
  I’d briefly mentioned some of my statistics about the numbers of different kinds of shops/businesses, and people thought it a good idea to somehow incorporate some of these into the project.

Well, there you go. Lots to think about. Currently on my list of things to do for this project:

• review Zoe Leonard’s work (and ask for permission to reproduce a few)
• draft a potential letter to introduce project to shopkeepers
• arrange to attend meeting of Old Town Business and Community Association, hope to get their whole-hearted support
• make mood-board for next tutorial.

That should keep me busy.

More thoughts from reading Shutting Up Shop

I’ve been really enjoying John Londei’s book, and it’s giving me more thoughts about my own project.

Firstly, it’s interesting to note how many of the shots are not simply ‘posed’ but painstakingly set up, with stock displayed on the shop counters in elaborate arrays. Not all of them, but many. I’d assumed that I’d want to just capture the shops exactly as they are.

Secondly, the write-up for each shop is really quite detailed. He’s clearly asked the shopkeepers for whatever history they have – when they started trading, how long it’s been in family, how long they expect to still be there and all sorts of lovely details.  And often (I’ve not read it all yet) they’re quite sad stories of shops knowingly in decline, not expected to stay in business beyond the current shopkeeper’s demise, with no-one else left to take the business on after – in some cases – several generations. And that’s even more noticeable when you read the very short summaries on his revisit in 2004. To read that the old proprietors died is no real surprise, but still a bit thought-provoking. Possibly worse is the number of times his research hits a dead end and he simply says, for example, “no-one known what became of Mrs Long or her family”.

One of the other projects I looked at earlier simply asked each shopkeeper “what do you love about your shop?”. If I’m going to turn this into a social history I’ll need a little more than that. So my wife has suggested (she’s good, my wife) getting in touch with someone from the museum to see if there might be a local historian who could work on this project with me. They could be talking to the shopkeepers while I set up the lighting and so on, and we could collaborate so that I do the photographs and they do the words. It’s a possibility.

Reviewing John Londei’s “Shutting up shop”

I’m really glad one of my tutors recommended that I look at John Londei’s work. I’ve just picked up his book from Stevenage Library and it is beautiful.

Thank you Hertfordshire Library Service for having a copy of this!

The scope of his project was pretty vast – he was photographing “traditional small shops” for a seventeen year period starting in 1972. His project was not based on a specific community so the sixty shops featured in his book are scattered all across the county. Like the others projects I’ve mentioned, the shops are shown empty of customers – just the shopkeepers posing in, or sometimes outside, their premises.

How each shop’s story is told

For every shot there’s a few paragraphs about the history of the shop and, more importantly, the people who ran them. And in many cases it’s clear that he was capturing scenes that would soon be gone, as many of the shopkeepers are elderly: the last of their family keeping the business going. And this is where his project stands out from the others: although the photos were taken in the 70s and 80s, the book was not published until 2007, by which time he’d gone back and visited the premises again to see what had happened in the twenty to thirty years or so that had passed.

Revisiting every shop in 2004

And sure enough, just as he’d expected, the majority are no longer trading.  Only seven of the original sixty shops featured remained in business.

Whilst I don’t suppose I’m about to embark on a project to record Stevenage High Street over such a long period, seeing John Londei’s book makes me realise that what I have in mind really is about recording something of the Old Town community as it is now. For it won’t always be the same.

John Londei himself died just last year.  You can see more of this series, and other work, on his website.

Another inspiration found

I briefly mentioned this project to a guest tutor, Gino Sprio, who’s doing a five-week project with us, and he immediately said I should look at the work of John Londei. I’ve had a look, it’s stunning stuff. His has been a long-term project (17 years in the making) recording what he describes as “small shops”, which has been published as a book – “Shutting up shop” – and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and The Museum of London.  I’ve reserved the book from my local library and look forward to seeing them properly. (Update: the book’s arrived and is brilliant. Review here.)

I’ve emailed him as usual to ask about reproducing images on here. In the meantime, here’s a link to the series on his website. Well worth a look.