The estate we're in/PYSCHO-GEOGRAPHY/history of the world part sw2/REAL ESTATE/a kind of living by Andy O'Connell (UK, 1965)  (November 26, 2009)

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Stuck at my Desk - general statement by Gordon MacDonald

I, like most magazine editors or publishers I’d imagine, spend most of my time stuck behind a desk reading emails, considering or editing texts, opening or sealing letters, looking through books and reviewing portfolio submissions from photographers and artists. Most of what I review, sadly, is not up to much – either being technically or conceptually underdeveloped – but occasionally I get to see new work, which is accomplished on all levels and this is what keeps me here at my desk and happy. This week I am pleased to present some projects - by photographers based in the UK - that have recently made me excited about being involved in photography. Note: When I say that work is technically accomplished, it is not about the practitioners' ability to use a camera – I am not a techno or stylistic bully – but is about the use of the camera in a way that suits the subject matter being explored. This may be the worn and torn remnants of a personal archive or the beautifully lit and photographed result of a studio project.
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Artist Testimonial

The photographs presented here are a series of observations, taken over a ten year period, each of which tells something of the lives of people in South London where they were made. One or two solitary observations started the project, gradually additions were made. It grew organically, the pictures introduced themselves, they just came along, like buses on Brixton Hill. The act of making the photographs became like the collecting of forensic evidence of society's varied ills. Image after image presented itself, and I photographed them in a clinical and detached manner. Originally the images were observations concerning addictions which manifested themselves in the urban environment – discarded needles in a tower block, Kit Kat wrappers stuffed behind a waste bin door, piles of lottery tickets, bottletops sunk into the tarmac outside an off licence, blue lights in bar toilets, murder letters through the letterbox. But as time passed they became more intense, more philosophical, more metaphorical – there are all manner of banal trivialities and petty humiliations out there just waiting to be documented. Click image to view yesterday's presentation

Andy O'Connell (UK, 1965) () lives and works in London, UK.
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