So what's the project about ?

In one sense, this is a project about how people come to terms with the spaces in which they live. Its not that these spaces need necessarilly be particularly bleak or undesirable: at the heart of the project are more general questions about control (or the lack of it) over our physical surroundings, and about how in the absence of such control, we can use photography to explore the ways in which people respond to the environments in which they find themsleves.

 

And who are the fantasists ?

We are the Fantasists. In this planned and regulated municipal age, few of us any longer have control over more than our most immediate surroundings. The world beyond our front doors - give or take the odd window box or few feet of garden - is no longer ours to control. So this project is about how people react to different aspects of the environment that has been imposed upon them and, in particular, about the fantasies they create in response to their surroundings.

MMost of us already create fantasies of one sort or another in order to help us gain control over our surroundings. We play these fantasies out in those parts of our world over which we still retain some control, namely our homes and gardens: leaded windows and rustic fire places, for instance; fantasies one and all.

 

Fantasies, What fantasies ?

Some aspects of an environment can of course be a bit more intrusive than others: an oil refinery at the end of your street is likely to have a bigger impact on your lifestyle than the name of the street itself, but both are factors that help to define our environment; both can throw up contradictions and both can provoke a response. It is this response that the project is interested in. This is our starting point.

The project will work with individuals and groups from different neighbourhoods and communities to generate images based on their responses to different aspects of their immediate environment. The idea being that like the fantasies which people already create in their homes, the images about their relationship to their environment should also retain some essential element of fantasy.

The current objective is to produce a series of photographs which feature particular members of a community and which will combine elements from the physical surroundings of those subjects with a visual exploration of the 'fantasy responses' evoked by those surroundings. The images being the result of an exchange of ideas between the subjects and the photographer.

The work arising from the project will be exhibited in situ, in the neighbourhood/s in which it was created or in a venue which has a relevance to them.