Wednesday 24 November 2010

Thurs 25th Nov: Morgan O'Donovan: The Facebook Project






When I was at college, I had a little penchant for visiting the passport photo booth in Boots when you could get 16 miniature portraits on one sheet for £2. I liked to record my changing hair styles and colour.......... and of course colour of my clothes every day. When they phased this out I stopped the routine and with the introduction of digital photography I stopped acquiring any printed proof of my changing face. This method of capturing your look has now changed over to the tool of facebook profile pictures. Everyone (most people on the Internet) have an account and a carefully selected mug shot to best encompass their current mood. The thing is that no one is recording it - its totally transitory. The snaps stack up in the folder online and don't get stored anywhere significant for future sartorial research............ until now. Photographer Morgan O'Donovan wanted to lift the faces off the pages of his friends public personas and put them in a project. By going out and about in London he could guarantee rounding up the most number of characters in one sitting which found him setting up in clubs and bars. The result is a catalogue of over 500 stark ring-flash straight up snaps. Every subject instructed not to smile was shot to expose the purest expression with no opportunity to feign an affected front. The cross section of contenders is really refreshing with no identifiable London cliques ......... (even his mum's friends feature)......... which is representative of the nature of "friends" on facebook........its a massive and varied network of associations and not necessarily close companions. Amongst the game of "guess who", are a plethora of recognisable faces from the fashion realm in-which Morgan usually works.............. head down to Dalston Superstore to scan the prints and slideshow to spot designers and stylists from the scene...............

117 Kingsland High Street, London, United Kingdom, E8 2PB 12:00 pm - 2:00 am

(Here is Morgan with his work and a detail of Patrycja Grimm's makeup which is a beautiful butterfly a little like something Im working on at the moment.............check back for more on that)

No comments: