Further to my previous blog post, entitled “Considering Image: Performativity, Aesthetic and the Documentary Process“, which discussed in some detail some varying theories on the ways in which photography and performance can collide and intersect, I thought it apt that I upload some photographs from the site itself. The images above are some taken on our first exploration of the Grandstand, and represent the beginning of our process of research, discovery and documentation.

Some of the images in this gallery represent a purely documentary process, intended to constitute a recording of the site, merely as part of the process of documentation. Other images are more aesthetic or artistic enterprises. The observer will notice that my images begin in colour, but that later images are shot in monochrome. This was a deliberate decision on my part: whilst shooting in colour probably gives the depiction of the Grandstand that is truest to life, by shooting in black-and-white I was forced to study my subjects more closely for contrast and tone, and therefore I noticed more detail in the Grandstand than I might if I were concerned only with colour. Examples of this can be found in the cracked pane of glass in “Lincoln Cross“, in the patterns apparent in the abandoned dolls and pushchairs in “Hidden, Lying, Dying, Crying“, and in the almost textile detail in “Wall Heaters“.

In the photography I undertook, I sought to identify details about the Grandstand that might otherwise go unnoticed. The internet is saturated with images of the main structure itself; therefore, in my images, I looked for alternative views (as in “The Grandstand, Lincoln“) or particular details or hidden intricacies which gave a different impression of the Grandstand than might be immediately apparent.

I have, for the sake of the Harvard referencing system, had to give the images individual titles. Those titles are horribly trite and constructed. However, the attribution of titles to each image has been a process which will not only make later referral back to a particular image easier, but has also given each image almost a higher status, as though the affixed names make them ‘art’ rather than just documents. For me, through naming, each image is in a way “validated”, and is more able to serve as a stimulus for further exploration of and understanding of the site itself. However, I am not personally convinced that naming each image is a helpful task – perhaps retrospectively applying names gives too much context and violates the original documentary truth they have without.