Your Life Is My Vanity Launch Party
May 7, 2010
The guys at Garage Studios must have gotten some decent feedback from you lot, because they’ve asked me to contribute another blog post. So here we go, I’m Kris Mitchell – and I have a photography addiction. Let me share with you my evening last night.
A guy, a girl, some film cameras, a bucket load of film and 1 hour a week for 8 months?
What does that get you? An insight into how the relationship between the photographer and the subject evolves over time.
Over the course of the last 8 months as Kevin Mason updated his website from time to time, I’d been watching the progress of his ongoing project: “Your Life is my Vanity Project”. The pictures, while initially admittedly a bit creepy, began to change over time as they became less about Kevin controlling every aspect of the picture and more about the interaction between the subject and the camera. The pictures that leaked out from time to time started to give you an idea of the direction the project was heading in, but nothing prepared me for the exhibition Kevin had planned.
Entering Garage Studios the other night, the expansive studio space was completely taken over by the 30+ week’s worth of images taken through the last 8 months. Walking through it I couldn’t help but become totally immersed in the medium. You could begin to tell when one or the other was having off days as it started to come through in the pictures by the end of it, you felt like you knew both people personally.
As a project, it’s pretty immense. 8 months of dedication on both participants’ parts – using nothing but film, be it disposable cameras, Polaroid’s or even medium format. The exhibition itself only serves as a vehicle to display that dedication, allowing the viewer too completely lose themselves in the process on a week by week basis.
The private viewing was a busy affair, lots of Brighton’s arty people coming out to see the finished product, lots of laughing and a few good opportunities to get your mug shot taken with either Kevin or Georgie. Is it worth a visit? It certainly is, and I can’t wait to go back and see it on a quiet weekday to take it in properly.
Cheers
“Your Life Is My Vanity” exhibition is running at Garage Studios between 7th-9th May from 10:30am-8pm and again from 29th-31st May from 10:30am-8pm. The exhibition is free to attend.
Visit the exhibition website & buy the limited edition book HERE
