Making ‘Photographs from another place’

Link to join the seminar on Teams

Abstract: When artist Alan Ward bought, on a whim, three boxes of old photographic glass plate negatives on eBay, he never imagined it would take him on a rich, five year-long journey of history and geography, revealing intriguing stories and fascinating characters.

Inspired by this forgotten photographic archive, Ward began to piece together a ‘faction’ of the identified photographer, Sydney J Gearing’s life. Using archives, documents, obsessive research and local engagement, he discovered a series of connections and coincidences with his own life – including a shared connection with Norfolk, London and the North-West – which deepened and drove the project. He visited the places and people touched by Gearing’s archive and responding with a series of reflective photographs of his own.

“When I began this project I had a strong sense that I was being entrusted with Sydney’s negatives and in a way his rediscovered life story,” says Alan. “Photographs From Another Place became a quiet consideration of our place in Sydney’s landscape and our increasingly fragile world. Once you start to spend time with these images, within the apparently ordinary and everyday, there is the extraordinary.”


Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Hilary 2021

Online on Teams (the link is above)

Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-2, 4-6, 8)

Convened by Christopher Morton and David Zeitlyn