A collection of artefacts found by members and supporters of the River Roding Trust in the process of cleaning up the banks of the River Roding. The photographs were all made along the west bank of the Roding between Barking and Ilford by Andrew Brown in October 2020.

Selection of initial reflection shots of the developments along the River Roding, optimistically dubbed the ‘Roding Riveria’. Will use these in the Warehouse exhibition, but work on others for the FMP (both on the river side and the side of the development facing the Abbey – see developer images on hoardings below).

And accordion book made from the hoarding images.

Some of the results of running the Processing 3 pixel sorting procedure on images from the periphery of the Riverside development. Interesting how the structure of the Riverside blocks leaves them almost unaltered by the sorting process. Had to experiment with the sorting thresholds for each image. In all cases, the sorting is in columns by the whiteness of the pixels (with the threshold set at around 300 to 600).

First shot at playing around with different ways of representing the group, taking influences from forms of group and individual portraiture. We spent some time looking through Dutch 17th Century paintings of civic leaders. This one by Bartholomeus van der Helst appealed, so we had a go using a simple single strobe set up.

We’re going to need a shorter table … More to follow maybe, after the group have looked at the prints. Followed a session of individual portrait work.

We took a look at the Taylor Wessing Prize catalogues for 2018 and 2019 and thought about different forms of portraiture for future sessions.

Each image is made from the same three photographs (the place as it is, organic material from the site, construction work around the site) with different tonal mixing. Just to illustrate the approach. Let it run as a slide show to see the relationship between the images. Or click on the image to see the detail of an individual image. I’ve also uploaded an animation based on the sequence (below – best played full screen) which maybe shows the relationship between images more clearly.

Now working on images relating to the developments and communities in east London that I am focusing on for my project. My intention is that these will look very different – and will visually relate to the regeneration strategy being deployed (future post about this). Info on the process here. Discussion of what I am trying to do in exploring questions of space and time in relation to regeneration programmes, communities and the environment here. All work in progress, with a long way to go, as always.

Steyerl, H. 2009. ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’. e-flux journal #10, November. Available at https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/ [accessed 31.01.19]

Thinking about how to develop a project from this, and perhaps how to relate the focus on objects to my work on communities and regeneration (useful discussion with Michelle about this, with lots of references to follow up).