TRAFALGAR SQUARE 2006


For a few hours each day the artist stood in front of the National Gallery of London in Trafalgar Square in order to photograph the people who stood on its balcony. The majority of people encountered this space collectively, as globetrotters full of anticipation, stopping to record a photograph that would retain their experience. Others engaged in conversation, oblivious to people and their surroundings. Others walked up to the railing and when nothing spectacular caught their attention, turned away. Then among all of the excitement there were the people who stopped. These people seemed to encounter the space with extra concentration. For a moment they ‘appeared’ to feel something deeply. It is they who endow the scenes with something that is indefinite yet entirely personalThere is no narrative to indicate to the viewer what or why the person is looking, gesturing, experiencing, and communicating this way. The person is presented frozen, a moment extracted, highlighted and exaggerated by the repetition of the scene. In this way the images are constructed, although unstaged, undirected; they were patiently anticipated by the artist who stood below, silently willing a slower quieter expression to emerge. This scene is both a moment of connection-disconnection. A person switches off, disconnects from all the things out there in the world, when they perhaps commune or reconcile with an inner experience. Or, it is a moment when they connect to the world through the senses, suspending thought. Or then again it could be neither. Perhaps they are thinking about lunch!  The presentation or viewing of a single image magnifies the individual emotional experience of the person who is central to the image, their expression singling them out from those around them. But this individual experience is undone when the images are presented as a series. In presenting multiple images of the same scene containing different individuals having ‘unique’ experiences, the separateness or individuality that occurs in one image is imagined. Through repetition, the ‘feeling’ individual becomes ‘feeling’ individuals.  As humans we try to read each other’s faces & bodily gestures as cues for something occurring internally. We can recognise emotion stirring in another human being.  That is, we sense that something is occurring in another person because at sometime it has occurred within ourselves. This emotional moment when presented repeatedly in a photograph seems somewhat strange, almost surreal, more so when that moment is in the context of public space where nothing is seemingly happening. “Trafalgar Square 2005/2006” captures a person, the photograph's subject, on a precipice from which the mind and body are invited to experience a space large enough to allow the imagination to wander, the eyes to close, or to look up and out into the distance. They are nameless and with emotions and thoughts concealed by the silence of a photograph.

Trafalgar Square, Banana
145.64cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Anonymous Portrait 1
156.17cm (W) x 117cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Anonymous Portrait 2
158.3cm (W) x 117cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Pigeons
157.38cm (W) x 117cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Beckett
138.45cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Boy
148.96cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Opera
137.52cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Eyes closed
126.88cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Blue Parker
147.8cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Orange
130.25cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Girl in Group
132.49cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph
Trafalgar Square, Crest
117.9cm (W) x 120cm (H)
Lamda Photograph


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