Developing the Plane Street Images. . .

The original idea behind the Plane Street images concerned quite a formal tableau featuring a number of characters, but the test shots made at the church threw up some curious ideas, which changed the emphasis of my approach toward the images in the church.

I began by making several shots with someone standing in for the models I hoped to use later. I simply had the person stand in place at first, but as we moved through the church, trying out different locations the place began to suggest certain images, certain ideas.

Taking as my starting point the basic idea that the people associated with the church still retained an emotional attachment to the space: that they populated it in their absence with those responsible for its material decline, I began to make a series of images composed around different locations within the church, featuring half glimpsed figures which could stand equally well either for those people who have occupied the church since it was closed, or for the echoes of those people who had previously worshipped here.

Further consideration and discussion suggested that these far more equivocal images were a more telling illustration of the recent history of the church and the relationship of its ex-members to the place, than the far less ambiguous, even heavy handed original idea of the posed tableau.