Adrian Clarke.
Through recearch around this subject of north east mining villages and general poverty i seem to be interested in i have come across the photographer Adrian Clarke. I found Adrians work on an online article publish by the guardian. Adrian started photography back in 2003...
http://www.adrianclarke.net/http1_www.adrianclarke.net/Home.html
"Since then I’ve been concerned with issues of deprivation and social injustice and their psychological costs. I’ve usually, though not always, accompanied my pictures with interviews with my subjects, with the result that my work has been used as a form of consultation with groups that are hard to reach and whose voices are rarely heard. My work has appeared in newspapers and magazines both in this country and abroad as well as being exhibited widely around Britain. Often it has been used to highlight and raise awareness of particular areas of social injustice or need. It has been used by organisations such as the Home Office and the National Health Service to inform policy and to encourage debate."
This small introduction on his website basically sums up him as a photographer and what his work consists of. This is exactly why i have took such an interest to his work, he has pretty much the same interests as what i have, however i am only just starting out.
The article i read by the Guardian is called...
"The end of the tracks?
What is happening in the former pit villages in the north-east of England? Photographer Adrian Clarke hears the personal stories of those left behind and of their battles with drug and alcohol addiction, poverty and violence."
So far in my Editorial project i have captured images in Blackhall colliery and Trimdon Colliery. I just feel such a huge fascination with these colliery villages which i have been surrounded by all my life. They are the kind of places most would not give two thoughts about, but as Adrian Clarke goes to show, there are some extraordinary people and things going on within these places. I find the colliery villages visually interesting just to look at, such as the run down shops and back alleys and they people you see on the streets living their every day lives. What i like about Adrians work and what inspires me is how he's looking further into the concept of the villages, he's looking into the lives of individuals. I would really like to do a project myself like that of Adrian Clarkes "Gary's Friends, 2006"
The difficulty i can see with being able to produce a project like this myself is the barrier of knowing and being able to find out such incredible stories about people in the villages. As Adrian explains, he often places writing with his portrait images, which are the stories these people have told him about their lives.
The full stories by the people are on the Guradian article however i will place some small quotes below each image as i feel in this case the images make more sense and give more of an impact with the story with them. Adrians work describes exactly what Richard one of our tutors first told us editorial photography was. "Imagery for the written word." I actually read the full article before then visiting adrians website to look at the images, it felt amazing to then put faces to the incredibly extraordinary stories i had just read about these peoples.
Gary Crooks 2006
"1990 was a bad year for me. I was 15. I was doing armed robberies and all sorts, and I was drinking and taking speed and acid. There were rival gangs in Bearpark and around the other pit villages, and there were fights with fists and crowbars and worse. Once, a group came to our house armed with broken paving stones. Someone even shot at me with a shotgun. "
Zoe and Angie Watson, 2006
Gordon Weir 2005
"I left school at 16 and did a tree surgery course. I was given a trophy at the end of the year for being the best student and then I got a job in Northampton where I lived in a bedsit. That was when I began drinking because there was nothing else to do. I came back up here and got a house in New Brancepeth with my girlfriend."
Gary Willis 2006
All of Adrian Clarkes projects follow this kind of structure of portraits of North East people along with their personal stories. Another project Adrian did is
"The teenage pregnancy rate
This project took place between June and December 2007. The aim was to focus on a group of people who are usually addressed merely as a statistic - the teenage pregnancy rate. All of the subjects of the portraits and interviews come from the North East of England, and most of them live in the Tees corridor."
this again goes to show the vast difference writing or a story and make to an image.
"I found out I was pregnant during the year I came out of care. I was 16. I don’t know who the father is. Either the midwife or my GP must have told Social Services because they organised a meeting to discuss what would happen to Rachel."
"I’ve known Amanda since she was a child but we became close when she was 13 and we began having a relationship when she was 14 and I was 15, just before Pyper turned one. People abused us for a while for having a gay relationship. They called us all the usual sorts of names, but it has settled down now. There are other gay couples with children around here, so it’s not as though we’re that extraordinary."
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