Whose Fantasies are we really seeing?
Perhaps the biggest single question underlying the 'Fantasists' surrounds the issue of whose fantasies we are seeing when we look at the pictures arising from the project: the artist's (mine) or the subjects'. The project is of course collaborative, but what form should / does that collaborationactually take?
This question has come back time and again. It's one that I've had to answer for myself as well as for the benefit of others. On the face of it, it's such a simple question but in practice the answer has resolved itself only slowly and by degrees.
In practice the process of collaboration has involved taking accounts of peoples' relationship with a given place as a starting point and then - from that starting point - teasing out specific elements of their story which I feel are central to their account and which at the same time appeal to me as the bases for images.
