Mark Neville distributed his first-ever photography book to 8,000 households in the small Scottish town of Port Glasgow, and nowhere else. He had spent a year living in the former shipbuilding town, documenting the lives of its residents during a period of post-industrial recession. Once the project was finished, he enlisted the members of the local boy's football club to go door to door, giving the book of images to its subjects. The boys earned enough money to buy uniforms and help pay for their away games. But some of the town's residents were less happy. One group of Protestant residents organized a public book burning behind the local Catholic Club.
That was 2005. Since then, Neville has embarked on a number of projects that similarly explore hard-strapped small-town communities — and the ethics of social documentary photography. "So often, these photo books end up on the coffee tables of white middle-class people like me," says Neville, "And not on the tables of the people in them." To level out this hierarchy of audience and subject, Neville tries to make work not only about but also for the communities in which he immerses himself (often for years at a time). This means the way his projects are shared is almost as important as the images themselves.
From 2010 to 2012, he photographed the residents of Corby, a town in the North of England affected by toxic waste contamination following the repurposing of the local steel works. He sent the only copies of the resulting book, titled Deeds Not Words, to 433 local authorities in the UK in an effort to change public policy on waste removal. In 2012, Neville documented the social divide between two neighboring suburbs of Pittsburgh, to illustrate lasting economic and racial inequalities. The images formed a slideshow for the nearby Andy Warhol Museum.
This triptych of projects about post-industrial communities comprises just three of the nine works included in Neville's new book Fancy Pictures (Steidl). It's his first monograph, and the first time many of his images will be seen outside of the communities they document.
Can you start by telling me about the project in Pittsburgh? Why did you choose these two suburbs, Sewickley and Bratton, in particular?There used to be a massive amount of money in Pittsburgh. Three of the top five wealthiest people in America used to lived in Sewickley, near Pittsburgh. It was the industrialists a hundred years ago — Carnegie and Mellon. They had these amazing summer houses, with private zoos and things like that. A lot of them are now owned by dotcom millionaires and basketball players. It's still a very pleasant place to live. Then you have the other suburb, Braddock, which is the opposite.
The project was commissioned by the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. A week after I finished my project for the New York Times Magazine, "Here Is London" in 2012, I was on a plane to America. I was there for five months. I worked day and night, just shooting, shooting, shooting. I looked at the extremes of American life, and all the social inequalities seemed to be about race somehow. The first night, we drove around in a car and four times I spotted a driver being pulled over by police. Every time, it was a white policeman and a black driver, and you think, "Well, something's wrong there for a start."
Was being a foreigner helpful or hard?It's quite useful to be "the other" actually. It kind of says you're not part of whatever's going on, which gives you a level of implied impartiality. I work hard to build up relationships with the communities I work with. I tend to live where I'm working. I move my whole life. And I push to get as much time as possible.
Who did you stay with in Pittsburgh?In Sewickley, I stayed with a family called the Smiths, who run an advertising agency. They were very generous. There's a whole flurry of parties in Sewickley. One of the expressions is that "the gutters are awash with whiskey," something like that. They call it "the Sewickley whirl" — of dinner parties, cocktail parties. They invited me to all their parties. In Braddock, the poorer bit of town, I stayed opposite one of the last remaining steel mills. If you'd gone to Braddock in the 70s, there would have been lots of shops, employment. Then with the demise of the steel industry, it faded away. There was a problem with crack cocaine in the 80s. So the suburb is kind of on its knees, and its population is mainly African American. Whereas in Sewickly, you rarely see a black or brown face.
The images of the two suburbs feature very striking visual parallels — showing how the two communities work, dress, and party differently. Did you seek out those visual contrasts or did they happen organically?The Pittsburgh and London projects followed chronologically, and they were two of the only projects I've ever done that had a mainstream platform: one was disseminated through the New York Times Magazine, one was in a slideshow at the Andy Warhol Museum. Quite often in my projects, I target my audience and I can control who sees the work. But with the London and Braddock-Sewickley projects I knew I wouldn't be able to control who saw the work in the same way. So the images themselves had to convey all the meanings I wanted them to. The images had to be much more aggressive, in a way. So I used those contrasts — those pairings of images — and looked at the extremes much more than I'd done in other projects: mainstream and subculture, black and white, rich and poor, youn g and old. All those very obvious opposites, if you put them together in a book or slideshow they can punch home a pretty powerful message about inequality.
Another thing I did with both of those projects was that I tried to echo the visual style of photographers in Britain and America who looked at those countries undergoing recession in the 1980s. I used film stock that looked like it could have been from the 80s. I tried to light the images so they looked like they could be Garry Winogrand photographs. It gives them a kind of timelessness but it also suggests that social forces haven't improved in 30 or 40 years. People are still subject to the racism, the same wealth inequality. In fact they're not the same, in some cases they're worse. So it was a visual way to make that point through the images.
How much do you try to construct or direct your images?Very rarely. Usually, it's me standing on a chair in a nightclub for four hours waiting for the perfect composition to happen!
How did you end up as an artist-in-residence in Port Glasgow?I'd done an MA at Goldsmiths, an MA at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, a BA at Reading University. I'd ticked all the boxes you're supposed to if you want to be a successful Young Turk, you know? But I still wasn't going anywhere. So my partner and I moved to Glasgow and I put in a proposal for a public art competition. By that stage, I was sick of trying to pander to an art world audience, and thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to make work for a different audience?' So much public art is forced on people. I thought that if I gave everyone a copy of the book at least they'd have some control over it. I also thought it would be a kind of critique. I'd always been intrigued by this kind of uncomfortable voyeurism I had, looking at a book by someone like Martin Parr. There's some kind of exploitation almost of the subjects — because they're not getting these books or benefitting from them. I wanted to make everyone there fee l some sort of ownership towards the book. But I still had very mixed reactions. Some people hated it.
After a year of trying to make sure everyone would be happy with the result, how did that feel?Oh god, I was so upset. But the fact that I did get this variety of responses was wonderful. With the public, and with a working-class community in a town like Port Glasgow, rather than the art world, you never know what you're going to get. That makes it very human and very real.
One note that runs through nearly all of your projects is images of clubs and dancing. What draws you to those settings?It's a number of things. I want to make technically brilliant images, and I want drama and emotion, and those are things you can get in a nightclub. For example, the image on the front cover of the Port Glasgow book, "Betty Dancing," it's not only a strong image in itself, it also somehow encapsulates all the feelings associated with the project — about community, celebration, about the book being a symbolic gift. Also, a lot of the towns I work in — deindustrialized towns — these communities have been through such hell. On a Friday, you might have a job but you don't know if on Monday it's going to be gone. So there's a sense that you've got to live for the moment. It doesn't matter how much money you've got in your bank account, you'll go out, and you'll get completely hammered. These are, generally speaking, quite heavy-drinking communities that I've bee n working in. How people choose to celebrate and let off steam is kind of integral to how these societies are. Dance and clubs are also just so fascinating. They're all about community.
Why did this seem like the right time to collect all your projects in one book? And the right time to make a book that's commercially available?This monograph is not an artwork. Usually, my books are part of art projects. This is a survey. First and foremost, I'm an artist. I'm interested in the debates about representation, ethics, and audience. So it's really important to me that those ideas can be discussed. And because my work has been sent out mostly not to the art world, it's very difficult for that to happen because nobody's seen it! So I thought that after about ten years of consistent work, I want those ideas to be discussed. Coming out with a publicly available book right after the Port Glasgow project would have defeated the whole purpose of the work. But now, so many years after the project's completion, I think it's a respectful time. All the projects have reached some kind of endpoint, where it's only going to be useful to have them discussed.
"Fancy Pictures" is out now through Steidl.steidl.de
Source: mark neville's provocative portraits of suburban life and small-town discos
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