Output details

'Transitions' - Exhibition as part of 'Factory' the 6th FORMAT International Photography Festival 2013

15 pieces

Chapter and Essay

The research begins with an original series of photographs by Huw Davies, which were commissioned as part of an Arts Council residency in 1987. The work was created as part of Industry Year and involved photographing at over 30 companies in the city of Derby. Derby was chosen because of its links with the world’s first factory at the Silk Mill and because of its reputation as the UK’s leading centre for high tech manufacturing. The focus of the original work was around the impact of 70’s and 80’s post industrialisation and the decline of labour intensive heavy manufacturing in the UK. It mainly comprised of portraits, documenting the workforce from the shop floor to the boardroom.

For the FORMAT International Photography Festival 2013 on the theme of ‘The Factory’ a new series of images have been commissioned which re-photograph and interview ten of the original subjects, exploring how their working lives, ambitions and expectations have changed over the intervening 25 years. Alongside this work Davies curated an exhibition, which draws on the images of other photographers operating around this period. This includes Industrial photographs from the 1950’s and 1960’s which reflect the spirit of post war industrial optimism, the work of Robert Day who photographed at Factory open days in the 1970’s and 1980’s and David Moore who worked in the communities alongside the Rolls Royce Plant in Derby at the same time that Davies was taking photographs inside the factory. Underpinning this work is the connecting theme of the role of the factory, either as a unit of social and economic order or through its omnipresence in the community; the function of the document itself as a representational tool and the relational dynamics between photographer and subject including issues of proximity and access.