The full story behind the making of the Crowds series

This time last year I had been planning a project that would involve travelling to Dorset and Jersey, to rephotograph places that Lily and Milly had travelled to almost 100 years ago. These two ladies appeared throughout a 1920s photo album that I’d bought online. The work produced was due to be shown at the Photo Oxford festival in autumn 2020. Needless to say, none of this was able to happen, so out of frustration I set about looking for new ways to make work for the project.

 Using Google Street View and other navigation software, I researched places they had stayed, and was able to see some of the places they visited. The first photo shown below was labelled Paradise cottage Mrs Forsey + Milly. The subsequent images here are where I have discovered the cottage to be.

The results, although interesting, didn’t help artistically, so my focus moved to photographs of Milly and Lily sitting on the Cobb in Lyme Regis. I remembered my own visits there: going as a newlywed in the late 1980s, and a short holiday romance aged 16. The boy sent me postcards for a while as he travelled. I searched eBay and bought other postcards sent from the area, every decade from the 1920s.

These memories sparked thoughts about the many millions of people that must have visited the Cobb over time, each with their own story to tell.  Story telling is a theme I often work with, so deciding to make a large - scale work, a constructed tableau, placing just a few of these people together at the same time on the Cobb, became the new project.

 Each person in Crowds at the Cobb has been individually sourced from photographs found online; extracted from the original photos and placed as near as possible to the point they were standing, sitting or jumping on the wall. The wall itself, the sea and sky are also composites - in total the scene used well over 100 photos; each digitally fractured and manipulated, with added painterly effects.

Started in April 2020, this image is a commentary of the time. During the first UK lockdown the population was under order to stay at home, and it was illegal to gather in groups. The scene gives a false impression of crowds during lockdown, an antithesis of reality. The fact that no faces are seen is a direct reference to the anonymity caused by the introduction of face coverings.

Crowds at the Cobb

April 2020

The second image in the series, another composite, is of a coastal path near Bouley Bay, Jersey; another place visited by Milly and Lily. By the time I started it the advice regarding the wearing of face coverings was changing. By mid - May members of the public were encouraged to wear them in enclosed public spaces by the government, leading to a rush to buy them while stocks lasted. Many people made their own, instructions could be found online.  Crowds at Bouley Bay is again a social commentary. People in the crowd have been carefully placed and had face coverings digitally added, some of them made from newspaper articles. This time I photographed props using whatever I had at home and added them to the image. Some of them obscure faces.

For the first time, there is a photograph of myself in the image, as well as one of the ladies from the album, both taken at Bouley Bay.

Crowds at Bouley Bay

The Crowds series is evolving, the third one is under construction. It’s a lengthy process.  Expect to see myself in it again, as well as some surreal aspects for the first time.