Output details

The Birdhouse

Commissioned by the Elmley Foundation and in association with the Edgar Street Grid partnership, The Birdhouse is the first outcome of an on-going project to respond to the significant changes taking place in one district within Hereford, a city established on agricultural foundations and with a long history of seasonal casual labour and rural working class economies on the border between England and Wales.

The changing demographic at the heart of Hereford will see the end of the presence of small holders and rural traders, who have visited the area over the years to sell animals and converse. The work progresses Grant’s engagement with working class communities in Britain and succeeded in creating a valid appreciation of regulars over a period of three years. A central aspect of the process, beyond the making of an extensive series of photographs and their consequent selection and narrative construction, was the work’s dissemination and, in particular, the methods by which the work could reach and be returned to the community from which it was drawn.

An exhibition was initiated and supported by the Hereford Photography Festival. It was sited in a public context pertinent to the work’s intended audience -and, in 2012, Ken Grant continued this engagement by sequencing, designing and distributing a 16 page, 4-colour ‘oversize’ magazine amongst the community he had been worked within. The return of the work and the subsequent responses were an integral part of Grant’s working process. The magazine included 84 photographs of regular poultry sale visitors. An archive of the work is to remain in the Hereford Archive Service, a public access inventory comprising public records and artifacts pertinent to the city since the 15th Century.