- Venue
- home
- Location
- East England
I hadn’t been there long when it dawned on me that I was looking at the person whose portrait it was. He seemed withdrawn, shuffled slightly, and turned to pass comment with his female companion. I was later told that he had a morphine pump in his stomach to ease the enduring pain he experienced as part of his illness. Simon Fowler presents five lives – five people, five portraits, for whom life-limiting and life-threatening illness is part of the fabric of life.
The final in this series of events, Fowler presents “Living with…” in SHOWFLAT, http://www.showflat.org, where artists have been invited to take part through exhibiting in their own homes. SHOWFLAT challenges the relationship between public and private for both artist and viewer as the artist presents their work in a very personal space and invites an interested public. Fowler also challenges the nature of public and private in the lives of his subjects. To open this Showflat, he especially invited the subjects of his photographs to his home for the evening, having developed a personal and photojournalistic relationship with them through his own relationship with their organization that provides care and nurture for those with debilitating disease.
These portraits show the relationship between the photographer and the photographed as a collaborative process to explore the person and their representation beyond the bounds of illness that is integral to each of these people. Richard Osborne talked about his experience of being photographed, and how he and Fowler came to the ‘decisive moment’: Richard was sitting on a dry docked boat, starting to feel tired and cold; this year, it’s been a harsh and cold winter working in the boat yards. Richard has worked in this environment for over fifty years, and his portrait presents a life long relationship with boats, to be beaten by wind, waves and fate but to be master.
Black and white portraiture has the evocative quality of presenting a legacy and these photographs have a contemplative quality: Victor Fournere sits astride his Kawasaki Trike, the dawn – or dusk of scudding clouds reaching beyond Victors’ head; Jeannie Campbell holds her head erect with dignity while her hair wraps work their magic; she gazes at a magazine, cast of faded glamour shed by a row of broadway lightbulbs enlightening what may be the lives, loves and losses of the celebrities in her magazine. A hazy glow emanates from the shrine on the wall, behind Terry Alexanders’ head, as he contemplates or waits on a pew in his Church. It’s the mid-point of the whole image, between a light of faith behind Terry, and his own self, that gap, that point between humanity and eternity.
Of all of the images, John’s gesture while speaking to someone off-camera, is possibly one of explanation, or open to accept or hold as he is engaged in conversation, at home amongst his own space and possessions, he metaphorically continues the narrative of these lives. Maybe best seen in empty rooms, these images are considerable in scale, but sit very comfortably in a spare and gracious loft space with magnificent views overlooking the Thames Estuary. The backdrop, a sublime view of the landscape, open expanse of sand, mud, sea, birds swooping on the gusts, a tanker in the distance moving impassively up the channel towards London; and the reality of our own time span; an eternity in the tradition of Romantic painting; the loneliness and alone-ness of illness. Fowler documents the lives of these people with dignity, compassion, a sense of sharing and celebrating, bringing respect, humanity and a deeper understanding.
