The Workers

A project for the people of Barrow-in-Furness. How do you link the past to the present to make us look at the past in a new light? To humanise the people in old photographs so they become tangible, real and more than just a snapshot. This is what I attempted to do with The Workers - I wanted us to see the past and for them to see us.

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The Workers is a commission for ‘Lives Through the Lens’ from Signal Film and Media. A series of portraits of people at work in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, UK, each paired with portraits from the over a hundred years ago. These are exhibited across the town in locations most people of Barrow will naturally come across - the library, the lots lifts in the station, shop windows, a ginnel etc.

The old and the new portraits look directly at each other, seeing each other across time, and as we stand between them we are caught in their stares, we became part of the piece, Barrow and time too.

The commission was to link local people with the their archive - the Sankey Collection - photographs of the area from the 1870s to the 1960s, via a new body of work. I chose to focus on the images of workers in the archive, these formal groups of people each turning and looking directly to camera, each holding purposeful poses, displaying the tools of their trade, often huddled unnaturally close together in groups as they ‘work’. I’d seen this ‘language’ used in other photographs of workers from the time and it had long fascinated me. The Sankey collection has a large amount images of people at work, small local businesses like Riggs the Cobblers as well as the huge halls of Vickers (Later BAE Systems).

I wanted to work with local businesses and take contemporary portraits of them using this same language. So I posed them int he same ways, and used all the troupes of the originals. Although each sets of people are from their own times, in sharing a language we are invited to see similarities between he two and see the originals in a new light - breaking away from us seeing them as ‘another old photo’.

We know that the people in the new portraits are people from Barrow today, if you’re local you might even know them, or certainly know their business. We know they have lives beyond the photograph, they live they work, they have families, they walk the streets of the town. So when we see them together, we might give the same logic to the portraits from the past.

The work was created for the people of Barrow. Featuring business people know, and presented through the town. The businesses chosen are those which are woven into the lives of the people of Barrow-in-Furness. Where everyone gets their school uniforms, many people have their printing done, or people who are hugely respected in the community, such as Tuk and her Thai food store, or Greg in Timpson’s.

Thanks to Signal Film and Media for the opportunity.

• 7 Portraits

• 7 Archive Photographs

• Presented as at a verity of locations in Barrow-in-Furness, on paper and board and C-Type photographic paper.

• A walking tour was conducted at the launch.

• A series of workshops with local people over 5 months, shaping and exploring the idea, the archive and photography.

Press:

Corridor 8 feature