Victoria
1st – 10th of July 2023
Victoria is a documentary photography project that aims to capture and interpret the lives of a group of late-teenagers living in a small town at the centre of England. It takes place in the summer before the splintering of their circle and journals the final few weeks they have together, constructing a hymn of all the anxiety, but also belonging, which lace their collective consciousness as they balance awkwardly on the verge of adulthood. While offering a candid report of young life in the more remote parts of England, the work also documents a spiritual and personal journey with the subjects at its centre as they are pulled from what felt like a fugue of crushing liminality, into a necessary regression of sorts, an untamed freedom facilitating their growth toward the next stages of life. The work is presented as a series of chromogenic prints depicting a sequence of stories underpinned by small happenings. Scenes that are delicate and understated but emanate unique beauty. The world of these photographs becomes almost microcosmic to the real world. Small moments, movements and details become signifiers for greater weights in life, and in the subjects’ lives. Bound by a common thread of truth, momentary truth, these fragments are lured out of the quiet moments of everyday and trapped in the fold where time meets physicality.
Preview date: 1 st of July 6-9PMLewisham Arthouse140 Lewisham WaySE14 6PD