In this photo story, we can see
the works of Nick Hedges who was asked by Shelter, the charity, to photograph
poor homes. This body of work seems to include a lot of overall shots of the
run down and even demolished buildings in locations such as Liverpool, Glasgow
and Manchester. The overall shots help in showing the full location rather than
parts of it and it gives the images opportunity to speak for themselves. In
this particular body of work, there are also a few sentences explaining the
situation, but I think the titles and images would be enough to tell the story.
By this I mean is that, once you see the children playing in the rubble, or any
location where a child is not meant to be, I can easily connect it to poverty.
As for the more medium close-ups, we start to see the rooms these people are
living in with chipped paint, tight spaces, messy rooms and more. Almost every
adult that is in these images are holding and interacting with the children and
it helps in showing that their children are not left alone, there are people
that are trying to take care of them with the little power they have. I think
as a society, when we see poor families, we always blame it on the parents for
not caring enough but I hope the images aid in showing how much they really try.
The adults also help a lot in emotion because most of the children do not
understand the situation they are in and seeing an adult portray an emotion. By
this, the viewer can feel the emotion by seeing it and they could understand
more what it would be like. I am not sure if the last image of this work is
meant to be the image of the child waiting outside her flat, but it works great
as a clincher. The image seems as if the child is not only waiting for the
parents, but even waiting for a better future, to be able not to worry about
when to eat and how to make the home warmer.
When it comes to the sad type
of stories, there are usually more close-up portraits especially of children's
faces. For this one, I do not think there was a need of that because the
problem speaks for itself, it does not need a face to portray it all but rather
to simply show the cold truth. The compositions are well thought out even
though the photographer might have had limited space to work in. Overall, these
images seem to truthfully portray the situation. The black and white images
work really well to set the mood and certain contrasts work really well.
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1969) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1968) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1968) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1969) |
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| (Hedges, 1969) |
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| (Hedges, 1968) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
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| (Hedges, 1969) |
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| (Hedges, 1971) |
Citations and images from:
Stone, M., 2021. 'A failure of society': Britain's slum housing crisis – in pictures. [online] The Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/feb/02/a-failure-of-society-britains-slum-housing-crisis-in-pictures> [Accessed 26 February 2021].
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