Girl on beach with rabbit ‘mask’, Westward-Ho!, August 1973.
Documentary photograph by James Ravilious

I’m very excited that the exhibition “Here: Uncovering North Devon” is opening on Saturday, 4th May at the Burton Art Gallery and Museum in my hometown of Bideford. This will be accumulation of three years work for Beaford Arts Hidden Histories project, of which I spent 18 months digitising 10,000 images by James Ravilious and Roger Deakins. Many of my worked-up images will be in the show alongside oral histories and a whole bunch of workshops talks and activities.

I’m going to be leading the following workshops myself starting on the 5th May where there is an all day workshop making ‘sun prints’. This is a free drop-in workshop from 11am-4pm and doesn’t necessarily need sunshine! Traditional photographic paper is exposed outside but in contact with various translucent objects like leaves or plastic litter etc, photographic chemicals do most of the work here transforming a white sheet of paper into an image which is often rich in warm tones; browns, oranges and yellows.

On bank holiday Monday, 6th May I’m leading a morning session 11am-1pm making photographs with a pinhole camera. Again free, this will take place upstairs in the Kingsley room at the Burton Art Gallery. You’ll ideally need to bring a light tight box for this however, I will have some that you could also use to make real photographic images, in this most primitive of cameras.

In the afternoon 2pm-4 pm you’ll have the opportunity to experience being inside a giant camera obscura, again in the Kingsley room. The room will be completely blacked out and you will be able to see the world projected onto the interior walls.

Near the end of the exhibition, 15th and 16th June, I’m leading a couple of days using traditional photography, using film cameras and a photographic darkroom with enlargers. Here you will get a rare opportunity of making your own print from a duplicate of either a James Ravilious or a Roger Deakins negative.

…an update on this exhibition:
It was really nice to see that I was credited for my digitisation and enhancing skills for each of the images on display!