Week 7 - Presentation Reflection
- Christopher Norgren
- Mar 18
- 2 min read
For my group's photo series presentation, we examined the series by Tom Hunter titled: Life and Death in Hackney. While there are more than 5 photographs in the series, we examined the 5 photos we felt accurately capture the themes and styles of the series. We chose to examine the photos: After the Party, Eve of the Party, The Way Home, The Outlaw, and The Vale of Rest, and we kept the 5 photos in their original order they are presented in the series. This photo series was shot on 5 x 4 large format camera, with an aperture likely on the smaller side, as Hunter's photos have a large depth of field. This photo series and much else of Hunter's work is greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite era of painters in England during the 19th century. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a collection of British painters in the 19th century who rejected the current artistic movements of the time and sought a return to the artistic style of early Italian renaissance art. Taking inspiration from this artistic movement, Tom Hunter aims to create a "melancholic beauty out of the post-Industrial decay" of Hackney during the 1990s. Hunter uses painting like composition, cinematic framing, and environmental storytelling to capture Hackney during this period of time. Hunter's use of sequencing is very interesting and disrupts what would normally be a linear timeline. The first photo in the series is titled After the Party, and the fourth photo is titled Eve of the Party, giving the series a unique order and forcing the viewer to consider this sequencing choice. Contextually, Hackney was considered the hub of counterculture and the warehouse rave scene that was pertinent at the time. This context, along with knowledge of Hunter's inspiration, the viewer is able to place this photo series within the larger social, historical, and cultural context of Hackney and the UK as a whole during the 1990s.
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