Bystander by Kerry Simmons and Jamie Ashman | Photomonth 2012

Private View: Thursday 1st November 2012 | 18:00-22:00

Daily Opening Hours: 2nd Oct – 3rd Dec 2012 | 09:00 – 17:00 every day

London based photographers Kerry Simmons and Jamie Ashman invite you to their first joint show ‘Bystander’. They both work within the genre of portraiture and collaborate on other works but for this show that is where the similarity ends. They present two separate bodies of work and share the same gallery space for Photomonth East.

Photographer Kerry Simmons revisits her Essex roots and turns her lens onto her estranged family. A childhood treasure lost sparks a journey from digital to analogue in an attempt to re-establish links with the past.

Questioning the role photography has played in the archiving of identity and memory; she has taken a century old portrait and traced the linage to the present day. Inviting Isabella Gom’s living female relatives to stand for a studio portrait and asking them the question ‘What (if anything) will this image say about you a century from now?’

Dedicated to the memory of a friend murdered in 2009, Jamie Ashman’s project ‘Hackneyed’ documents friends and acquaintances all living in the borough. The project focuses on the young male inhabitants, who may face limited opportunities and, in some cases, the lure of gang culture.