Audience In The Community

Rather than the usual inaccessible university gallery exhibit for my end of year show we will be displaying our final images of the academic year in a pub. The clear benefit of this will be that people coming and seeing the work would not have been predisposed to seeing a photography exhibit normally.

We were given a geographic location within the town of Falmouth. Penryn, the village I live in, is a satellite of it. I found initially I was thinking about the specifics of photographing on the high street, and it's features. Then I thought about how I could use this to express some element of the lives of the people who lived, shopped worked and more broadly loitered there. Seeing as the work would be in and of the community this made total sense.

What I wasn't considering was my actual statement. What it was the people of Falmouth would say if I asked what they thought of living here. At the start of the year there was a large piece of graffiti by the train station which said "STUDENTS OUT OF PENRYN". Sadly for them the intake at the university will only be expanding in the years to come. Indeed their views exist in a sort of paradox since if it wasn't for students, Londoners, and holidaymakers Cornwall wouldn't be much at all.

What really stimulated my technical approach is the book I've recently been reading called "Shots From The Hip", which concentrates on the great one things one can achieve with a camera when ignoring everything our normal sense teaches us. It teaches you not to look through the viewfinder, focus the lens, use an appropriate shutter speed, let alone load the appropriate film for the low light conditions or even hold the camera particularly still.

The VK challenge consists of purchasing two alcopops and asking for two straws and drinking them both as quickly as possible. The technique known as the "strawpedo" works by placing the drink in your mouth and the straw outside of it. The air comes in through the straw filling the vacuum caused by 660ml of vodka and sugar water going into you in the space of around 8 seconds.

I see this graffiti duck frequently around town on cash machines, bus stops walls etc. I was told this picture wasn't suitable for exhibition due to the word "CUNT" being written on it in permanent marker, unless I edited it out. I said that I could never be censored.

I received an amount of harassment for photographing my friend Daniel rather worse for wear by the urinal in the toilets of the nightclub we were in. I politely told the persons concerned they could mind their own fucking business.