Portrait: The Lightbulb Project

I’ve been visiting a lot of exhibitions lately and been really enjoying viewing photographs the way that they were meant to be viewed: big on a wall. Only here do you really appreciate a photograph, the texture of the print, the subtleties of the subject and study the potential story behind the photograph. I’ve always wanted to put on an exhibition but never had a body of strong work to display, so I’ve started a new personal project called “The Lightbulb Project” an ongoing series of portraits of Creatives where I hope to explore process, inspiration, ideas, and collaboration. Why have I called it “The Lightbulb Project”? Tenuous visual link to ideas and stuff…..

I’ve always been fascinated with creativity, it’s a mode of working, a push and pull of ideas and inspiration; a process which is meant to be expressive and outwards looking, but requires a balance of introversion to feed it. I have included strong photos from past shoots mainly from performers and hope to include more new shoots from the worlds of art, music, writing, performance and of course self portraiture.

The idea is that it’s a constructed image; created by a collaboration between photographer and artist which they feel gives a reflection of who they are and how creativity is important to their identity. Some of these, like the performers have been taken from in the midst of a photo or video shoot. 2 new shoots include ones from people behind the scenes, Art Directors’ Simon Walker and Beth Robinson who I’ve worked with a lot, we put together a snapshot of their world steeped in props, paints, fabrics, books, drawings and scary doll heads.

A selection of these including Simon and Beth’s are published in July in PoV Magazine 

More of The Lightbulb Project here