Headlines

This body of 16 (to date) large format colour photographs takes as its point of departure a number of attention grabbing headlines selected from a local paper 'The Hackney Gazette'. This publication carries regular features of crimes in a graphic tabloid journalistic style. Headlines also makes reference to Thomas Hardy’s interest in the immediacy of local stories in the Dorset County Chronicle. These headlines such as ‘Rat in Bed’, ‘Women Mugged on Towpath’, ‘Naked Death Plunge’ and ‘Man charged after Body found in Suitcase’ provided a subject source for staged reconstructions and the headlines were also carried over and used for the titles of the works.

A non-documentary approach was taken and locations, props and actors were sourced to take part in tableaux vivants in Hackney – the scene of the crimes. Cibachrome provided a tonal and hue brightness as it was important that the usually gory acts were not literally depicted but lifted and, if possible, transcended. Ambient light proved to be the best possible way of a bringing a naturalness to these ‘probable fictions’, which were based on actual occurrences and planned to the last detail. Historical painting provided a point of reference and filter for the creation of the photographs. For example, there are compositional similarities between Road Rage Thug jailed for Attack on Priest and Guercino’s The Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels in the National Gallery London.

Headlines was shown in solo exhibitions (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 2003; Centro de Fotographia, Salamanca, 2004; ‘Living in Hell and Other Stories’, The National Gallery, London, 2005/2006).

Four of the images were reproduced in Recontres D’Arles 2006 and thirteen are reproduced in Tom Hunter, a publication by Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura 2004, which also carries an essay ‘ ‘Mannerisms with the Value of Truth’ by F. Javier Panera Cuevas.