Final Major Project
Booker Skelding
Diffusion Festival - Cardiff
April 2019
Attending these Exhibitions have armed me with knowledge and ideas for projects and how to exhibit them. They do not all connect directly with my interest in photography, however I always seem to collected and learn something useful.
Paul Cabut - Documentary Photographer
Saturday afternoon 13th April 2019, I went to Paul Cabuts, 'Chapel' exhibition. Which was part of the 'diffusion festival' programme. Paul documents a series of chapels in Wales, he has exhibited approximately 70 images so far and has photographed over 200. He explained during his presentation that every chapel is different in its design and no two are the same. He goes on to explain that because less and less of todays communities attend places of worship that the chapels are being sold for commercial use and private dwellings conversions.
During the half time break, Paul took a few of us for a walk around the village of Ynyshir and showed us the chapel that he attended as a child and told us stories of the village he grew up. He explained a little about how photography found him, he wanted to show the world of his experience of living in the valleys.
'He was initially motivated by the differences between his personal experiences of living and working in the Valleys, and the way in which the region had been represented in photography and other media.'
I was inspired with Paul's exhibition and talk, he explained that the Chapel project is ongoing and he will continue to photograph chapels. He also has other projects running at the same time. "Some of them are a never-ending" he said. He keeps documenting over periods of years and years.
The most important piece of inspiration I took from this experience with Paul has changed my thought process that my 'Doors and Windows' final major project would be a start and finish project. I realise that can do the same, "why can’t this be a working progress, a chapter, a beginning and not an end"?
Exhibiting work, doesn't mean its over. Now I can develop and continue to document my breaking down barriers and moving forward. I will continue to open doors and document through imagery where my journey takes me.
Paul's exhibition was displayed in a very bright space, his images, white frames and mounts where all uniformed and minimilistic.
It was simple and uncluttered, very much like his website. I found this allows the mind to take its time and look at the images without feeling rushed or distracted.
Each image had the name of the chapel in text in the left hand corner.
Attending the opening talk was very beneficial and meant so much more than looking at the images in isolation.
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Paul's series of 'Chapel' images are very uniformed and all are taken from standing directly infront of the structure. He has not waited for an obstruction to move, i.e. we can clearly see vehicles parked outside in these two images above. He has not waited for the golden hours. The images are more or less straight out of the camera with very little editing if any at all. We even have a cat sat in the gateway of the chapel above left. How sweet. The images will be of a very low ISO as the prints are available too buy in poster size.
Diffusion Festival - Millenium Centre
I have taken these images of the exhibition - 'Let the world adore you', in order to gather ideas for my own exhibition. This was literally an up cycled room divider, painted pink. The stand accommodated 12 large square images in a wide open space to walk around. This set up would be ideal for my exhibition, as I have 14 images to display, and there is plenty of room on the stand to add more images.
Diffusion Festival - Senedd
The Coal Face
This is a simple exhibition layout, taking very little space. The coverage on the video footage is voices of miners at work. 3D images are digitised of miners portraits accompanied by the audio.
