I had the pleasure of attending the private view for the Shutter Hub Open at Photomonth East London International Photography Festival at the Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch last week, where one of my FMP images was being shown. 

One of the obstacles encountered to this point has been the difficulty in securing an exhibition space to show the FMP work and settling on the best method of presenting it. I don’t want to create unnecessary barriers between the work and the viewer, as this would be counter to one of the key aims of stimulating conversation and connection in as accessible and inclusive a way as possible. 

One of the benefits of the evening then, was that aside from it being great fun I came away with a new idea for presenting the work in the FMP. The images in this show were printed on newspaper by Newspaper Club and stuck to the wall with tape. When this idea had been proposed to us by Shutter Hub, I was sceptical about how colours and detail would be preserved in these prints. 

Happily though, the final results were great, with plenty of detail and good preservation of dynamic range and a surprisingly good amount of shadow detail in particular (especially relevant to me when thinking about how night images will look once printed). The fact the images were then simply stuck on the wall created a very informal and egalitarian feel to the show. Though the content was incredibly varied, there was a uniformity and unceremonious feel to the presentation that was largely due to this use of newspaper print.

This would work perfectly for the way I envisage a possible FMP show of my own work and would be a significantly cheaper option than getting a number of archival prints done with handmade frames. This possibility makes achieving a final show a lot more likely in practical terms and I will be researching this option further in the coming week.

You can find images of the exhibition installation here