This is one of the 16 pinhole portraits I made on the streets of Liverpool, during the Summer and Autumn of 2006. The portraits, which explored individuals' responses to their feelings of citizenship and place, were made in response to a Mercy organisation commission 'Going Native' and were exhibited at The Arena Gallery, Duke Street, as part of the Liverpool Independents Biennial of 2006.
The text provided by Peter to accompany this image reads:
'When Sean proposed photographing me with St George’s Hall as a backdrop, the inclusion of this neo-classical building made me think of the book I was then reading; Virgil’s Aeneid. This book, the bane of public school boys’ Latin lessons, is in fact an exciting tale of the fall of Troy and the subsequent events leading to the founding of Rome. What a perfect metaphor I thought, for the contemporary invasion of Liverpool! As others who endured the scrutiny of Sean’s long pinhole exposures will know, the three to five minutes seemed to pass quite quickly and such a lengthy exposure usually excludes the recording of moving traffic and passers-by. However, on the day of the sitting, heavy traffic resulted in a white van dominating the middle ground in front of the hall. Sean was a little dismayed by the inclusion of this artefact, but I reassured him that; to me this spoke of the triumph of ‘white van man’ and his cultural dominance over the city’s classical past. What may have been a portrait pastiche; a momento mori of a nineteenth century grand tour, is instead located in a contemporary milieu, where the van bearing the legend “Enterprise” is at least as large, and seemingly important as our classical heritage'.
Sean
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