The Spaghetti Tree

The Italian communities of Bedford & Peterborough in the UK formed in the 1950s as men were recruited from Southern Italy to supplement labour shortages in the local Brick & steel industries. These photos were taken between February 2013 and 2014 at Italian community events in both Bedford & Peterborough. As an outsider, I took up the position of community photographer; attending events and providing portraits as mementos. I was interested in demonstrations of ‘community’ and of ‘family’ being played out in front of the camera. Using flash and its blanket reveal, I attempt some form of objective democracy. Yet, sitting between construction and documentary, as ever these images are highly controlled and constructed. Forever wary of trying to ‘document’ a community I had no real knowledge of, these images are the result of an oscillation between this attempted objectivity and my growing subjectivity. Frustrated by the perfect image and its hermetic surface, I have taken these images at just the wrong moment. I am looking for a disruption; ‘a crack that lets the light in’. The series consists of 45 images, within which the repetition of particular people, themes and motifs aims to draw attention to the means of construction as well as to the passing of time. This work pulls together strands from my previous work, mixing documentary with performance and construction and experimenting with various levels of control and direction. Specifically within this community, I became interested in the tensions between public and private, formal and informal and in how these disparities relate to construction and accident within photography; the perfect and the imperfect image.