Wherever You Go

2001

To create documentary photography that can eloquently speak of a moment in history, a place and human relationships requires a photographer to negotiate, temporarily, a role in the lives of others. Gareth McConnell’s photographs of the young people — mainly sixteen or seventeen years of age — who live in the flats and shared houses of Quay Foyer have that eloquence and are born out of the potential for mutual trust he brought to this project.

Some of the Quay Foyer residents are shown in a single portrait, others in couples, presenting their bonds of love and friendship. There are also portraits in diptych or triptych form, selected from the gentle shifts in camera angle and posture in one sitting. All these photographs are taken in the bedrooms of the residents. The beds, the carpets and storage units are the same in all the rooms and the personalising of these institutional spaces is created by the idiosyncratic decoration and debris in each. Just as the embellishment and clutter of the bedrooms chips away at the institutional feel of these interiors, McConnell’s way of photographing the sitter does not, precisely, standardise them either. Most of the young people sit on the edge of their beds, similar enough to each other in their poses to suggest a fairness— an equality — in the photographer’s treatment of them, but not forced into a uniformity whereby signs of personality are made interchangeable between the sitters.

— Charlotte Cotton.

Full piece can be downloaded from selected texts
This project was commissioned by Lighthouse

2001

To create documentary photography that can eloquently speak of a moment in history, a place and human relationships requires a photographer to negotiate, temporarily, a role in the lives of others. Gareth McConnell’s photographs of the young people — mainly sixteen or seventeen years of age — who live in the flats and shared houses of Quay Foyer have that eloquence and are born out of the potential for mutual trust he brought to this project.

Some of the Quay Foyer residents are shown in a single portrait, others in couples, presenting their bonds of love and friendship. There are also portraits in diptych or triptych form, selected from the gentle shifts in camera angle and posture in one sitting. All these photographs are taken in the bedrooms of the residents. The beds, the carpets and storage units are the same in all the rooms and the personalising of these institutional spaces is created by the idiosyncratic decoration and debris in each. Just as the embellishment and clutter of the bedrooms chips away at the institutional feel of these interiors, McConnell’s way of photographing the sitter does not, precisely, standardise them either. Most of the young people sit on the edge of their beds, similar enough to each other in their poses to suggest a fairness— an equality — in the photographer’s treatment of them, but not forced into a uniformity whereby signs of personality are made interchangeable between the sitters.

— Charlotte Cotton.

Full piece can be downloaded from selected texts
This project was commissioned by Lighthouse

2001

To create documentary photography that can eloquently speak of a moment in history, a place and human relationships requires a photographer to negotiate, temporarily, a role in the lives of others. Gareth McConnell’s photographs of the young people — mainly sixteen or seventeen years of age — who live in the flats and shared houses of Quay Foyer have that eloquence and are born out of the potential for mutual trust he brought to this project.

Some of the Quay Foyer residents are shown in a single portrait, others in couples, presenting their bonds of love and friendship. There are also portraits in diptych or triptych form, selected from the gentle shifts in camera angle and posture in one sitting. All these photographs are taken in the bedrooms of the residents. The beds, the carpets and storage units are the same in all the rooms and the personalising of these institutional spaces is created by the idiosyncratic decoration and debris in each. Just as the embellishment and clutter of the bedrooms chips away at the institutional feel of these interiors, McConnell’s way of photographing the sitter does not, precisely, standardise them either. Most of the young people sit on the edge of their beds, similar enough to each other in their poses to suggest a fairness— an equality — in the photographer’s treatment of them, but not forced into a uniformity whereby signs of personality are made interchangeable between the sitters.

— Charlotte Cotton.

Full piece can be downloaded from selected texts
This project was commissioned by Lighthouse

2001

To create documentary photography that can eloquently speak of a moment in history, a place and human relationships requires a photographer to negotiate, temporarily, a role in the lives of others. Gareth McConnell’s photographs of the young people — mainly sixteen or seventeen years of age — who live in the flats and shared houses of Quay Foyer have that eloquence and are born out of the potential for mutual trust he brought to this project.

Some of the Quay Foyer residents are shown in a single portrait, others in couples, presenting their bonds of love and friendship. There are also portraits in diptych or triptych form, selected from the gentle shifts in camera angle and posture in one sitting. All these photographs are taken in the bedrooms of the residents. The beds, the carpets and storage units are the same in all the rooms and the personalising of these institutional spaces is created by the idiosyncratic decoration and debris in each. Just as the embellishment and clutter of the bedrooms chips away at the institutional feel of these interiors, McConnell’s way of photographing the sitter does not, precisely, standardise them either. Most of the young people sit on the edge of their beds, similar enough to each other in their poses to suggest a fairness— an equality — in the photographer’s treatment of them, but not forced into a uniformity whereby signs of personality are made interchangeable between the sitters.

— Charlotte Cotton.

Full piece can be downloaded from selected texts
This project was commissioned by Lighthouse

2001

To create documentary photography that can eloquently speak of a moment in history, a place and human relationships requires a photographer to negotiate, temporarily, a role in the lives of others. Gareth McConnell’s photographs of the young people — mainly sixteen or seventeen years of age — who live in the flats and shared houses of Quay Foyer have that eloquence and are born out of the potential for mutual trust he brought to this project.

Some of the Quay Foyer residents are shown in a single portrait, others in couples, presenting their bonds of love and friendship. There are also portraits in diptych or triptych form, selected from the gentle shifts in camera angle and posture in one sitting. All these photographs are taken in the bedrooms of the residents. The beds, the carpets and storage units are the same in all the rooms and the personalising of these institutional spaces is created by the idiosyncratic decoration and debris in each. Just as the embellishment and clutter of the bedrooms chips away at the institutional feel of these interiors, McConnell’s way of photographing the sitter does not, precisely, standardise them either. Most of the young people sit on the edge of their beds, similar enough to each other in their poses to suggest a fairness— an equality — in the photographer’s treatment of them, but not forced into a uniformity whereby signs of personality are made interchangeable between the sitters.

— Charlotte Cotton.

Full piece can be downloaded from selected texts
This project was commissioned by Lighthouse