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'It was heaven to start with...' - The Open College of the Arts

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'It was heaven to start with…' thumb

'It was heaven to start with…'


We are just back from the Brighton Photo Biennial where it was fabulous to see so many of our students at the two day study visit. There was plenty of interesting work to see and I have a feeling that any blog post which tried to capture the full range would end up far too long. So here is one small taster.
The video above is from Glasgow Effect a multimedia documentary photography project that examines why in Glasgow you are more likely die a premature death than even can be explained by the extent of the deprivation in the city. The work is on show at the Phoenix Brighton until 18 November, but work can also be explored online here.
 


Posted by author: Genevieve Sioka

10 thoughts on “'It was heaven to start with…'

  • Beautifully put together, I really enjoyed the mix of stills and stop motion overlayed by the monologues. The author also took an unfashionable stance, that these were good places to live that decayed, that the buildings were not the issue, rather the people.
    What I was most struck by was the progressive revelation of the internal colour of the blocks as they were demolished. It was almost as if the personalities of the residents was being exposed by their choice of wallpaper and paint. Somehow that made it even more poignant as it reinforced the sense that these were homes of real people who created lives there.
    Thanks for sharing, food for thought

  • I found it interesting that those interviewed suggested that it the fault of others that this project failed. It was the standard of other, newer, tenants; or the fault of the council for lowering the standards of entry. It left me wondering where the sense of collective responsibility is. Troubling.

  • Interesting to see the combination of still photography and “slideshow” with sound, including the voices of those who were actually involved with what happened and were able to effectively tell the story.

  • Very well put together. The kind of process that’s happening up and down the land. On the one hand places like the Park Hill flats in Sheffield are being transfigured into prime apartments whereas elsewhere they’re being pulled. You can’t says it’s because they’re high-rise because the same thing happens with houses. Where/how does the deterioration start, can it be traced back? What’s the common denominator?

  • Very interesting and nicely put together of stills and time-lapse work. (I’m not over-keen on some of the processing of some of the shots).
    It’s a pity how things go, and I agree with one of the tenants, that there has been a shift in moral values in modern society… and it comes down to self-respect (my opinion anyway).
    Something else… I was a little surprised at the slow speed the tower(s) were taken down… maybe I’ve just been too long in China.
    Anyway…. thanks for sharing Gareth.. an interesting piece.

    • ‘I was a little surprised at the slow speed the tower(s) were taken down…’
      Me too Dewald, it somehow adds to sense of tragedy, the slow unpeeling of the outer shell to reveal the colours of the walls which held so many peoples hopes and dreams.

    • Re slow speed. Usually that’s because of the proximity of other buildings and the possibilities of collateral damage.

  • This is a really interesting (social?)breakdown in technicolour – normally the physical implosion takes very little time – here it’s going to last a while – why? To see beauty in tragedy? Is it a co-incidence that the 2012 Landscape Photographer of the Year award went ( after the original winner was disqualified for over-use of PS) to Simon Butterworth whose subject was “Condemned, Port Glasgow, Inverclyde, Scotland”?. Link: http://www.take-a-view.co.uk/2012_winners.htm .
    Thanks Gareth & host of patient tutors, for a really stimulating & inspiring 2 days in Brighton… and it carries on!

  • While researching Tom Hunter, I came across his series called EMPTY TOWERBLOCK:
    The empty tower block stands as a symbol of a paradigm failure in UK social policy: the Dystopia and ultimate waste of castle-in-the-air housing projects which were scrapped and abandoned. They are all the more poignant a choice for imaging, given that tower blocks were originally meant to be a dream (Utopian) solution to the issue of ‘decent’ housing.
    Concurrently, and in contemporary art terms, this series evinces something of ‘the uncanny’: that Freud-coined sensation whereby one feels, oddly enough, as if somebody had just left the room. In other words, that universal experience of recognising things as having been touched by the human hand in some way (in this case designed, built, ‘lived-in’) … yet, paradoxically, sensing the distinct lack of any human presence (or the failure of human effort).
    Although his images are not as strident as those in “The Glasgow effect”, he analyses the dystopia very well, in my opinion.

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