CHARLES-SAINT
Photography & editorial direction: paula roush
With photobooks by: Kavita Mahabir-Singh, Eden Hawkes, Dominika Ostrowska, Sundus Abubaker, Amy Valance John-Brown, Zainab Jode, Jack Sheppard, Chloé Tomasin and Monet Jean-Charles.
Format: Newspaper artwork
Publisher: ACAVA &msdm publications
Year: 2015
2-3>Kavita Mahabir-Singh | Ever Changing 22 Pages 29 X 20.5
4-5>Eden Hawkes | Between Bricks Of Nature 8 Pages 14.8 X 21 cm
6-7>Dominika Ostrowska | Serenity 16 Pages 21 X 14.5 cm
8-9>Sundus Abubaker | Nature 8 Pages 14.8 X21 cm
10-11>Amy Valance John-Brown | As Nature Unfolds...9 Pages 19 X13 cm
12-13>Zainab Jode | 16 Pages 14.8 X 21 cm
14-15>Jack Sheppard | Aperture 10 Pages 19.7 X 29.7 cm
16-17>Chloé Tomasin | Sitting Down Brings Back Memories… 8 pages 18.5 x 12.5 cm (148 cm total)
18-19>Monet Jean-Charles | Isolation 16 pages 14.8 X21 cm
1-20> paula roush | where shall we wander 72 pages 21 x 29.7 cm
Developed for St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing in North Kensington, London, Charles-Saint is a collaborative photographic and editorial project exploring how walking, photography and publishing can reveal the layered histories of a place.
Working with students from St Charles College, participants first studied contemporary photobooks and artists' publications before undertaking a series of photographic walks through the neighbourhood. The project examined everyday landscapes, fragments of institutional history, urban transformation and personal memory, using photography as a way of investigating the relationship between place and lived experience.
Each participant produced an individual photozine, while the project culminated in a large-format newspaper publication bringing together the different bodies of work. Folding, sequencing and assembling photographs became part of the artistic process, transforming individual observations into a collective editorial constellation.
Installed permanently within the St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, the project demonstrates how publishing can operate simultaneously as artistic research, public artwork and site-specific archive.
A PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT BASED AROUND A
CONTEMPORARY HEALTH CENTRE
Brief: create a site-specific photographic project for St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing in Ladbroke Grove area, West London.
In the first workshop we started by looking at photobooks and photozines that engage with sites/ places / spaces and debate
what site-specific photographic work can do:
-explore poetics of the everyday in the area-
-investigate relationship of space to memory
-document urban transformation
-uncover fragments of historical urban landscape
-represent feelings, emotional response to the space
-research a specific site through walking, drifting
and getting lost
Photozines are a very tangible way to work in response to a place. Its immediacy allow for a quick representation of a subject or idea; and they can be easily designed and printed with a home printer and photocopier. We looked at: Lucinda Smart’s Let me take you by the hand, a photonewspaper work, Adam Murray’s Winterthur photozine ,and our photobookzine Paintball Field, examples of photoworks that resulted from spending time photographing a place and sequencing the photographic series into a timeline that captures the lived experience of the place.
We also had our first site visit and used the photo cameras for an initial photo-documentation of the centre. The history of the site can be traced back to 1879 when Saint Marylebone Infirmary was built in Rackham Street, Ladbroke Grove, to support the sick poor serviced by the Saint Marylebone Workhouse. Renamed in 1930 as St. Charles Hospital, some of this background story can be uncovered at Peter Higginbotham’s workhouses site.
