The Young Satellites: Six Million Tales in the Teenage City
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AtomRooms Gallery presents an exhibition curated by Brett Walker showcasing the works of young photographers Jack Davison, Lydia Roberts and Conor Williams. The exhibition will run from 8th – 24th December at AtomRooms’ Portobello Road Gallery.
This exhibition will showcase works from three young creatives who have each found a means to express themselves through the medium of photography. Beautiful, yet challenging, the images will allow a wider audience to understand young people’s perceptions of the world around them and the six million unheard tales in the teenage city.
A word from the curator, photographer Brett Walker: What is the purpose of photography today? Far from the days of traditional film, young people of the 21st Century are armed with digital cameras, laptops and scant technical knowledge. No wet cold darkrooms or rolls of film for them, rather they are tucked up in bed with a card full of perfectly exposed shots and a 15” Macbook to keep them warm. Is it too easy for the young photographer today? Is it valid? And more importantly does it have a purpose?
In the past, photography has always had a purpose. In its most insidious form it has been used by the government, corporates, the press and advertisers to encourage us to feel less than we could be. In its purest form, photography was a tool for recording fact, from Hiroshima’s mushroom cloud to the family snapshot, proof we all went to Blackpool, with the tower in the background.
Now the two combine, with the digital age allowing anyone with an urge to express themselves and the means to access quality equipment to do so. And the results are awe-inspiring and most definitely valid as an art form.
The images showcased in this exhibition are all produced by young people aged 16 to 19 years old, and they say as much about the photographers as the people within them. The digital camera has become the new guitar and young people are picking them up, learning a few chords and shaking the house down, the tunes may be simple and the playing less than refined, But the lyrics… oh the lyrics
There are 6 million tales in the teenage city. Choose one.
Behind the scenes filming opportunity: a West London photoshoot will take place on Saturday 13th September giving the press and the media the opportunity to see our three young photographers and their curator in action.
Artist biographies:
Brett Walker
Originally from the north of England, Brett moved to London at 15 years of age alone and penniless. After working as Peter Linburgh’s assistant in London and Paris, Brett continued to climb in the fashion and advertising industries throughout the 80s working for The Face, ID and Tatler among others.
He turned his back on the commercial world due to an allergy to frocks and make-up, spending a year in the merchant navy and travelling to Angola and Brazil to work with street kids. 16 years later, Brett picked up a digital camera having never worked with one before and hasn’t put it down since.
Brett now rediscovers his own personal demons in the faces of strangers. He has no need to travel far to find them in his local area of Notting Hill, Portobello and Ladbroke Grove and seven years of shooting and collecting images has made Brett one of the ten most popular and viewed photographers on Flickr. Brett is also an established filmmaker and has recently been commissioned to produce content around the Homeless World Cup for Winkball Productions.
Jack Davison
Jack has always been a country boy, having been stuck in remote bumpkin villages in deepest darkest Essex since he was a dot. As a dot he didn’t get up to much, apart from draw everything that poured forth from his head. Then he picked up a paint brush and made a lot of inky mess on canvas. Yet it was not until 2006 that he started taking photos and realised he could never better the camera’s ability to capture a moment.
He took shit photos of flowers, dogs, old people, street signs for a couple of years, but it was not until he started studying other photographers’ works that he felt he was starting to get somewhere.
Now Jack can’t help but be continuously alert for something worth capturing. He drinks ginger beer and take photos with big shiny cameras, and London is not so daunting through the lens.
Jack will take part in photography exhibition The Young Satellites, curated by Brett Walker.
Lydia Roberts
Swindon based student Lydia Roberts grew up loving art and creativity, aswell as dance, which has given her a better knowledge of shape and positioning in photos. She first picked up a camera in 2008 on a holiday and has not looked back. She’s constantly inspired by the work of others and is motivated by what she sees. She specializes in striking self-portraiture that she feels reflects the many facets to her personality and creativity.
Conor Williams
The licence to create from scratch has always been a driving force in Conor’s life, from sketching bizarre characters to evoking his own designs of a world ever so slightly removed from reality. It is the only way Conor knows to subdue the persistent ideas of his mind.
Photography became an integral part of his life in 2006 when Conor met his biological father for the very first time – himself a photographer with a taste for the unusual. The moment they met, Conor’s father shoved a camera in his hand and told him to shoot anything and everything and Conor learnt the art of capturing strangers in the streets without them knowing. Since then, Conor’s art has developed and his focus is on taking the peculiar scenes and characters of his mind and re-creating them in a photograph.
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