Westerham
Photograph
1998 (made)
1998 (made)
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
Toby Glanville, a young British photographer, was recently commissioned to produce a series of photographs depicting people at work and in their local environments in Kent. The photographs from this series, published in the book Actual Life are a sensitive record of life in this southern English county at the in the early years of the new millenium, across a range of people and subjects. This photograph shows a workman on top of a scaffold towering above the rooftops below. The psychologist and writer Adam Phillips has written that ‘one of the many striking things about Glanville’s portraits of people – apart, that is, from their unstartled stillness – is that his subjects are revealed but never exposed. His photographs seem to give people a sense of themselves, without exploiting their self-consciousness in front of the camera’.
Object details
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Object type | |
Titles |
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Materials and techniques | C-type print |
Brief description | 'Westerham', [man on scaffold], 1998, c-type print by Toby Glanville |
Physical description | Colour photograph of a man on a scaffold tower, with the view of village rooftops below. |
Dimensions |
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Style | |
Gallery label | Photographs by Toby Glanville
A print by the young British photographer Toby Glanville was among the few contemporary pieces selected by Bruce Bernard when he formed the collection for James Moores, currently showing in the Canon Photography Gallery. Photoworks, an independent visual arts organisation that promotes photography in the South East, recently commissioned Glanville to produce a body of images showing people in their occupations and environment in Kent. A selection of the remarkable work from that commission is shown here and accompanies a new publication Actual Life with a text by Adam Phillips who has written perceptively:
Glanville’s photographs seem to arrest the attention of his subjects, but without interrupting it. And it is this gift that makes his still-life photographs so eerily unobtrusive One of the many striking things about Glanville’s portraits of people apart, that is, from their unstartled stillness is that his subjects are revealed but never exposed. His photographs seem to give people a sense of themselves, without exploiting their self-consciousness in front of the camera ...They make us wonder, for a moment, what it would be like if embarrassment was dispensable; if we were undistracted by the consolations of shame.
Looking at these photographs, and being looked at by them their unharrassed openness, their unfussy clarity is like a reinventing of curiosity. A looking at that is not even a wanting to see through; a feeling for the sufficiency of what happens to be there.(December 2003) |
Credit line | Gift of the photographer. Copyright Toby Glanville |
Production | This work was the result of two commissions to record people in their occupations and environment in Kent at the turn of the century. The commissions involved Photoworks, Kent County Council, Sevenoaks District Council and Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. |
Subjects depicted | |
Place depicted | |
Summary | Toby Glanville, a young British photographer, was recently commissioned to produce a series of photographs depicting people at work and in their local environments in Kent. The photographs from this series, published in the book Actual Life are a sensitive record of life in this southern English county at the in the early years of the new millenium, across a range of people and subjects. This photograph shows a workman on top of a scaffold towering above the rooftops below. The psychologist and writer Adam Phillips has written that ‘one of the many striking things about Glanville’s portraits of people – apart, that is, from their unstartled stillness – is that his subjects are revealed but never exposed. His photographs seem to give people a sense of themselves, without exploiting their self-consciousness in front of the camera’. |
Collection | |
Accession number | E.337-2003 |
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Record created | February 24, 2004 |
Record URL |
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