[(6)] Oxford Reunion

In September the six photographers who collaborated to stage the [(6)] exhibition at Bank Street Arts in July/August 2014 will be getting together once again. The idea is to produce a collective body of work over a weekend on the nominal subject of Oxford (the city). The work will be shown in a gallery in Oxford Nova Scotia (Canada) later in the year. Tanya Ahmed has been the driving force behind this and has the contacts in Canada.

The [(6)] are Tanya Ahmed, Dewald Botha, RobTM, Nigel Haworth, Peter Mansell and me.

I have been turning my mind to what I might do…

I will probably stick with my interest in urban architecture and how this links with history of place. My current thinking is that I will focus on a single street, George Street.  My idea is to make a series of images that show the current street frontages. Working from one end of the street on one side of the road and back on the other side. I most probably won’t include every house but make a selection. Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on Sunset Strip  is a definite influence, see here. The contrast between the elegant old architecture and the modern shop/restaurant frontages will draw attention to how the service/tourist economy now dominates the street.

I also have details of the Kelly’s Directory for the street dated c. 1890, so I am thinking that I might also insert captions indicated what the buildings were used for in Victorian times. This I believe will further reinforce the sense that George Street is no longer a place of production (as it was) but  rather one of consumption.

I have extracted this image from Google StreetView in order to illustrate and test out the concept.

I plan to visit Oxford before the event to do some more prospecting…