The Big Society
Prix de la photographie, Paris – Gold 2011
There are occasionally unique moments that allow access to the privacy of a life otherwise unobtainable. These subjects were all moments away from colonic bi-pass or stomach reduction surgery and at the time of being photographed, detached from their old lives and bodies; they were looking forward to a new life offered by the potential salvation of surgery. This project was edited from a series of ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots and I have chosen to present the ‘before’ only. The subject Neil (Man living with mother (deceased)), to whom I have dedicated the book, had already suffered 3 heart attacks at thirty years old; he was barely able to stand for longer than 10 seconds at a time. He had to make a decision between continuing without surgery and dying or risk death during surgery. He decided to go ahead with the surgery and died soon afterwards; a week after I met him.
We see Neil at his weakest and most vulnerable but he cannot be fairly defined in a single moment or in two dimensions. We are constantly passing through different emotional states and the camera only captures a moment in this flux. Here on show are some painful and intimate emotions shared; if we recognize these feelings, we must acknowledge the possibility of similar moments in our own futures. The extreme emotions within us are manifest in momentary glimpses of the lives of others but these are merely an exploration of the limits of ourselves and not the whole truth of a person’s life.
These subjects were shot in 2007 – 2008 and in hindsight, appear as a by-product of a pre-crash society without boundaries; they were and still are despised allegories of our own perceived failings and the decadence of our 1st world society
This is not documentary; there is deliberate tension between social realism and a personal infection. Nor is it an Arbus-esq freak show or something to be mocked, these subjects exist as a part of ourselves, they are in this moment representing what we could be or are; they are physical representations of our own emotional possibility.
