00:00 Kate Genever: Okay, so this is Kate Genever recording Ross Williams for the Scene But Not Heard project. We’re in my house in South Lincolnshire, and it is May the 10th. So, Ross, erm, yeah, tell us how it all began.
00:15 Ross Williams: Okay, so, I applied to do a degree in literature in, uh, Hull University, and had interviews, got accepted, and then managed to fail all my A-Levels, um, so desperately got a portfolio together to try and do a degree in graphic design at, um, Hull City College, as it was then, and very late on got accepted onto that course. Um, and started to do a degree in graphic design, erm, in the… it’ll be… 1979 or something like that, erm, and really enjoyed it, erm, and then midway through the first year, erm, a bloke called Daniel Meadows, um, started as a member of staff there, uh, he was a photographer, erm, and became, I became really interested in his work, uh, he wasn’t always about, quite often he would disappear off to do some work for the Sunday Times, um, I remember he photographed, I think it was Julian Bream and went on a tour, so we were left to our own devices quite a lot, which, if you were motivated and if you were really interested in things that were happening around, erm, was wonderful, and then every now and again he’d come back, we’d look at contact sheets, erm, and, yeah, I started to become really interested in things that had nothing to do with me, uh I guess, if I put it that way, um, the kind of bizarre and unusual things. He’d, Daniel had shown us a lot of works by people like Homer Sykes, and the small, weird events that happen in and around Yorkshire, which, you know, once a year, you know, the Burr Men of wherever, and Gooseberry weighing at Egton Bridge, and I just thought these events were absolutely fascinating. and visually, incredibly exciting, too, there’s a lot of performance about them, um, and the images I saw were probably the images that were kind of the height of action, and I was really interested in the things that were happening before and after as well, erm, so I kind of started to make a lot of work, erm, about these, and then suddenly realised that, yeah, everybody had seen these now, they’d been recorded by Homer Sykes, and they’d been re-photographed by another group of people, so started to look for other things that maybe were interesting that were not shown, not exposed, not open to everybody, erm, I started to look at the local bars and clubs, activities and events that happened there, which were kind of really low key, erm, but were visually exciting, which drew people together, erm, and people had very, very different interests, um…
02:57 KG: Interests from you?
02:58 RW: Interests from me, definitely, yeah, yeah, uh, very different interests from me, and very different lifestyles from me, and they were different from me, and you know, I’m gonna make no bones about the fact that I othered these people, erm, othering was not a word we ever used on the course, it wasn’t something we ever looked at. The ethics of documentary practice and representation wasn’t anything we ever discussed or considered when I was making work, it wasn’t one of those kind of topics, erm, you know, I guess Daniel had made a lot of work in his omnibus, he’d been around the country photographing groups of people, erm, and those people came to him more than… but he did come to them as well, I dunno. Yeah, well, anyway, it wasn’t a topic we hadn’t discussed, and I started to kind of notice kind of events happening in clubs and bars. I photographed boxing, I photographed stripping, strippers – male and female strippers. I photographed alternative nights and the main location, I guess, was the Tower, the Tower nightclub in Hull, which was run by somebody called Wally Mays, who … I dunno, I just had the ability to … we kind of got on. I don’t know why, but, we got on, and I just used to be allowed to go and photograph anything and everything, so, you know, when the strippers were on at halftime through the boxing event in Hull, you know, I was in their changing rooms, photographing them chatting to them, and then I was in the downstairs with the doctors and the doctors’ ring, you know, stitching up boxers after they’d had a fight, and I could get everywhere, and that access was really, really interesting to me, and created kind of the bodies of work which I felt really happy about, erm, that I could say, “yeah, this is the experience that the boxers had,” or, you know, “this is the experience that the audience had, and this is the experience that the audience had, and this is the experience the audience didn’t have, um, because, you know, we got access to these places, and it kind of felt quite special. Whilst photographing the boxing, um, I kind of noticed what’s coming on in the next week, erm, I’m almost certain at that time he… He was called Kandy De Barry.
04:56 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
04:56 RW: Um, and I kind of turned up, and I introduced myself to Les, who was his manager, erm, not Kandy, Kandy was kind of busy, and also Kandy was the star, so, you know, I didn’t feel like it was appropriate for me to go talk to the star, but Les was really, really welcoming, erm, asked me to stay in one spot for the performance, which was high up in the rafters of the Tower nightclub, erm, and I just took a series of photographs of the performance, probably the back of Kandy, the audience, and Les in the foreground, erm, and kind of got really interested and involved in that, and then followed Kandy to some of the pubs, erm, on Holderness Road, erm, I’ve forgotten the names of these…
05:36 KG: The Alexandra?
05:37 RW: The Alexandra, yeah, that’s right.
05:37 KG: On Hessle Road? That one?
05:38 RW: Yeah, yeah, the Alexandra, yeah, which was a beautiful architectural pub, and then, um, just sort of recognising the kind of relationships with the audience and Kandy, and I didn’t really even question the kind of, the complexities of what was going on, um, you know, I was just there to make images which were hopefully exciting, striking, different,
um, which had a story, certainly, um, but, this notion … I didn’t even question whether Kandy Lee Barry was gay, you know? I mean, it wasn’t even a question in my head, he was just a bloke who dressed up as a woman who performed, um, in very, very, I guess, if I’m going to be honest, very rough areas of Hull, which, you know, which weren’t areas I would normally go to, so, as a photographer, I guess I didn’t felt I fit in any camp. I didn’t fit with the audience, I didn’t fit with the performer, I was just there to make photographs of the event, um, and again, in retrospect, um, you know, I’ll move on to the fact that actually I teach photography and the notions of othering are absolutely frowned on, and this notion of social practice is so much more kind of promoted, and, you know, we talk to students about their kind of ethics and representation, and we talked about the responsibilities and rules and representation so carefully now, um, and the fact that didn’t happen in the late ’70s, I was quite surprised by, um, ah well, it didn’t, and, uh, yeah, I just went over there to make stuff. So I mean, I kind of was aware of an incredible rapport between the audience and Kandy Lee Barry, um, and that rapport was still there in the last performance, um, what month was that? Was that…?
07:20 KG: January.
07:20 RW: In January, yeah, um, and no longer Kandy Lee Barry, but Bobby Mandrell.
07:25 KG: Bobby Mandrell.
07:25 RW: But there was still that incredible rapport between them, um, and as complicated as I found it then, I guess because I’ve got all these questions in my head now, because I’ve been through a whole process of education and documentary practice, and yeah, because I have issues with some of the, some of what was going on in that performance I found it equally as confusing, but from a very different range of perspectives. Um, the images, I guess… I’ve never shown those images, they’ve never been published.
08:02 KG: What are … Tell me what else we can see on them? So what are… There is the section where you’re at the Tower, and you… The first set where you’re high up looking down.
08:11 RW: High up looking down, yeah, yeah, I mean, I never went behind the scenes, um, with Kandy, I’ve always… I’d really loved to have done that, I don’t know why I never asked, because with every other event, I always kind of, I dunno, I got in, so yeah, I was in the background, I was there, like I said, with the boxing being stitched up, with the strippers in the changing room getting changed, um, the male stripper was a scream. [Kate laughs] Um, you know, his mother made his four foot penis for him out of, uh, fluffy material, um, because she made soft toys and why wouldn’t she make his fluffy penis, you know? It’s, uh… yeah, um, and he was such fun, um, the ladies didn’t really appreciate him because he didn’t take all of his clothes off, but, you know, it was kind of a … um, an odd environment, um-
08:55 KG: Do you think, um, going back to why you wouldn’t have gone, were you intimidated by… do you think there was an intimidation?
09:04 RW: Possibly, I mean, I think the way that Bobby was almost like revered by the crowd became very obvious, and I think, um, the other people that I was photographing, they were kind of every day kind of people, but Bobby had a kind of, yeah, kind of a … there was something about him, that, yeah, which made me feel like I couldn’t really approach, um, which evidently was not the case, having talked to him since, um, about that, um, and having … I guess the next step I should maybe talk about is the fact that I’ve shown him my archive since, um, and a lot of my work now revolves around re-investigating my archive, asking questions about it, and then trying to make new work in relation to that, so I actually had the opportunity through this to actually show Bobby my, um, sorry, not Bobby anymore, but yeah.
09:55 KG: Yeah. Ray.
09:57 RW: Yeah, Ray, yeah. [they chuckle]
09:57 KG: As he is.
10:00 RW: My archive, and ask him which images stood out to him, erm, and why, and, um, he selected images which were much quieter, erm, they were the images at the end of the show where he sang, oh, What Is It To Be A Man, is that it?
10:15 KG: Uh, What Makes A Man A Man.
10:17 RW: What Makes A Man A Man. I mean, I … I guess, how old would I be? I would be 21? I wasn’t even listening to that really, I was much more in tune with the visuals, but he’d undressed from being a woman, back to being a man, and they were the images that he chose, um, and I printed those up as a second exhibition, um, and yeah, that makes perfect sense to me now, um, at the time, yeah, that was the boring bit at the end where, yeah, but it, evidently it meant a lot to him, um, and those q1uestions, and then the audience’s response to that, I seem to remember it being incredibly warm, you know, and we’re talking about, you know, Hessle Road, it’s, you know, one of the rougher areas, well it was then, certainly, one of the rougher areas of Hull, um, and that acceptance was, yeah, really confusing, but that’s… Yeah, yeah.
11:06 KG: And do you remember showing those images back in college and sharing them with people?
11:12 RW: Erm, I do remember talking to Daniel about them, very, very vaguely, it was a long time ago, erm, really, the aesthetics of two or three of them were you know kind of the moment, I mean, it was a very… I guess it was quite a traditional, in as much as you were trying to tell a whole story from a very, very limited range of images, so-
11:32 KG: The six image rule or whatever it is that he talks about?
11:33 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or even one, sometimes, but yeah, yeah, we weren’t working necessarily for editorial and things like that, it was, you know, the one image that communicated and connoted the [he coughs], our experience of the event, so, yeah, I think some of those images did capture… There’s one specific one where I’m quite high up and Les is looking up at me smiling, and I’m looking down on, uh, Kandy Lee Barry, um, and he’s got a bikini on and a whip, and then you can just about see some of the faces in the audience if I print that negative very carefully, and it, there’s that lovely kind of relationship, um, kind of recognition of the photographer, recognition of the performance, recognition of the relationship, I guess, between Les and Kandy at that time, and the audience and Kandy as well, and it was a … Yeah, I think that really worked as an image, um, but yeah, in a, for a series of images, I think Daniel probably picked out maybe five or six that he really liked and, yeah, in those days, it was just printing them up, um, and that was it, that was the end of the process.
12:35 KG: So how would your day, how would the week, would it be a case of then you going out and photographing on the weekend, then coming into college and printing everything, would they, would you do all the print in college?
12:48 RW: Yeah, yeah, all the printing happening in college, so-
12:49 KG: And the developing in college?
12:50 RW: Yeah, everything, yeah, yeah, so, um, it was more like probably three-weekly, I would say, I think, yeah, we kind of, we made a lot of work, we went out and made a lot of work before we showed it to Daniel.
13:03 KG: Yeah.
13:04 RW: Maybe shot… Well, I say, not a lot as many other courses, Newport College was, they were shooting maybe seven, eight rolls a week. We were shooting maybe seven, eight rolls in three weeks, um-
13:15 KG: Because of the cost?
13:17 RW: The cost, um, yeah, maybe access, and I think Newport really pushed, erm, volume, whereas maybe we considered some quality a bit more. [They chuckle]. I didn’t say that. [They chuckle]. Um, but, uh, and then, yeah, and then we would make contact prints of everything, and then we all had these beautiful loupes and little magnifying glasses and we went through them meticulously, um, talking about, you know, what they were showing, who they were showing, how they communicated things, um, and the aesthetics as well, the aesthetics was very, very kind of prominent.
13:49 KG: Tell us what you mean by that.
13:49 RW: By aesthetics, um, it was all black and white, um, it was about, uh, kind of awareness of composition, awareness of, um, light, counter change, about an awareness of a technical approach as well, um, whether you operated or pushed processed your film, the qualities that would have on the final image, the depth of field, um, so everything was discussed, choice of lens, all of those things had a really, really major impact, and it’s something that, as a lecturer now, um, I still try and instil in students because they are, you know, they can shoot… I know students who in a week have shot over 20,000 images. 14:27 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
14:28 RW: But why? [he laughs] Yeah, what is it? You’re bound to have one or two in there, maybe, that are good, but it’s about being able to kind of understand the subject matter, how you want to represent it visually, what are the key points that you want to draw from it, and then approaching it both technically and aesthetically in order to communicate and promote those sort of aspects, so I knew when I was photographing, um, at the Tower, that I wanted the audience in focus as well as Les as well as Kandy, which required a bigger depth of field, so I’m talking technically here, it required me to be shooting at about F11, F16 in a very, very dark area, so because I understood about operating, I pushed my film to 6400 ISO, um, and it allowed me to get F11, um, at about, I don’t know, 30th of a second shutter speed or something like that, which was just enough to freeze the action, and then when I came back to the darkrooms, I processed that film for 24 minutes instead of 11 minutes, and yeah, and I was aware that it was meant to be really high contrast, but that worked really well, because Kandy was lit on stage, and he stood out against the audience who were sort of not lit, but just visible, so I think it’s having those, well, understanding the situation you’re in, um, in terms of light, um, understanding the situation in terms of what you want to show from that situation, and being able to apply-
15:46 KG: The technical skill!
15:48 RW: It is, it’s an incredible, I mean, I think photography is incredibly hard. I mean, um, what is it, Paul Graham, I think one of his quotes is something along the lines of ‘photography is easy and photography is difficult,’ um, and yeah, anybody can take a mobile phone out and shoot, but, you know, if you really, really know what you want to communicate and know what you want to say … And then, it’s not just that, it’s about the ethics now, it’s about the selling, it’s about the… yeah, all, yeah, yeah, promoting your work, and, yeah, showing your work, so it’s, yeah, it’s, there’s a lot going on, yeah, yeah.
16:18 KG: So you would print up your contact sheets-
16:19 RW: Yeah.
16:20 KG: -you’d have this body of work, and then you’d all sit around? Because Russell’s talked a lot about sitting alongside other students, or-?
16:27 RW: I think that might have happened later on, um, there were only maybe four or five people I can remember showing my work with.
16:33 KG: Really?
16:34 RW: Erm, yeah, just Daniel then maybe, yeah. And we had an exhibition called Six After One at the Kendal Arts Centre, afterwards, the six of us who kind of really got on, the ‘One’ being Martin Parr, that was one of his first exhibitions at the Candleberry Centre, I’ve still got the catalogue somewhere, and yeah, I think the six of us were very, very sort of kind of close, and shared work quite closely, um, er, but, Russell was the year after me. Also, Russell was on a fine art course, not a photography course.
17:04 KG: Yeah, he was an interloper.
17:06 RW: He was definitely an interloper, yes, yeah, yeah. [he laughs] Erm, I remember seeing his first body of work and I was blown away with it, it was gorgeous, so yeah, yeah, and I think the reason he interloped was because of that notion of aesthetics, because he had that, because he was coming from a … He obviously had an understanding of things like composition and things like that, and that came out through the photographs as, yeah, erm, so yeah, no, it was a maximum of , I would think, four or five in a session with Daniel sitting down, poring over contact sheets-
17:35 KG: Really looking.
17:36 RW: -yeah. I mean, yeah, that would take a full day, I would think, to look through contact sheets, then you might be indicated four or five you want to, he’d like to see as a print, and then you’d be in the darkroom for the next day printing, yeah. I also remember when, during the Falkland Wars, when, um, a lot of the boats came back to the docks in Hull, and Daniel managed to get a, some kind of pass for us all to go down, and we spent the day photographing the troops coming back, erm, and we kind of, again, showed all our contact sheets, and Daniel chose one or two for us to print, very big, 20 x 24 [inches] I think, they were big prints.
18:09 KG: Wow.
18:09 RW: Erm, and-
18:11 KG: And what for, a thing? For a show, or?
18:13 RW: Erm, I don’t know what happened to them afterwards, to be honest, I think it was to exhibit somewhere, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, um, I never got to see that, yeah, yeah, but it was a, that was really interesting process, and at this point I really should mention the story [he chuckles], sorry Daniel, of Daniel getting very excited printing one of these prints, erm, in a massive, massive tray in the darkroom, there were about four or five of us in the darkroom, and he was sloshing the, uh, fixer round very, very frantically, to the point where the fixer went all the way down his corduroy trousers, erm, and without a second thought, he just whipped his corduroy trousers off in the darkroom, rinsed them off, hung them up on the drying line, and then carried on printing in his big Y-fronts [he chuckles], he’s just like … I don’t think I could get away with that nowadays. He just [he laughs]. Bless him. [he chuckles]
18:56 KG: Do you remember them as ex … yeah, what’s the feeling of those times, what do you remember, it being exciting, or?
19:05 RW: It was, yeah, the opportunities just to go and photograph wherever you wanted for, oh, really, very little reason, yeah, I remember my third, my final year, I’d literally just walked across from the university, from the college, to something that they were, ironically, was called Model Dwellings, um, which was where the council put all the problem tenants, and for some reason, and it… I … This is the other thing about photography, especially in documentary photography, it’s about how you introduce yourself to people and how you get people’s trust, I guess, and make people want you to be there to photograph them, erm, so I photographed I would say 99% of the people in that area, it was kind of a courtyarded building, erm, it had a wall in the centre where they beat blankets, they had a little stone where they chopped firewood, erm, it was like stepping back to Victorian workhouse, erm, and there were people there with incredibly difficult backstories, all of whom seemed to be actually happy for me to … I spent Christmas with two or three of them, photographing them at Christmas, you know, it’s a, yeah, so yeah, the potentials, and also photography in those days with lots of journals, lots of magazines, they were looking for photographers, um, and, you know, getting your work published was really exciting, erm, the … I was really, really fortunate in as much as when I graduated, I actually had a year’s commission to photograph at the 20:25 Fuel Industry, so I spent a year straight after that, erm, and then I did a bit of part-time teaching at the college as well, so, yeah, it was, there was, yeah, there was lots of opportunities, lots of travel. I mean, okay, I was only [he chuckles], I had a three day all expenses paid trip to Doncaster, erm, er, which was wonderful talking to … and the, we were taken over to various mines and all the various kind of coking plants and things like that, and I kind of revisited a lot of these, erm, during the following year, made photographs, but it was, yeah, it was just exciting. [he chuckles] It was a really, I mean, I guess, if you’re quite nosy and wanting to know how other people live, having a camera is a passport, it’s just a, it makes you legitimate – or it used to do, I’m not sure how legitimate it makes you now, but it used to make you legitimate, you’d turn up, um, yeah, I got commissions from Hull museums and galleries to photograph faith in the area, so I just turned up with … in the total immersions, where they kind of set this, you know, they did, they’d be quite happy for me to photograph, and I’d, you know, turn up to the, oh, Quaker Meeting House, and they didn’t even know I was going, because the person who was meant to tell them I was going was ill, [he chuckles] so I just sat there during their service and photographed, and it’s just, yeah, it’s really interesting to get involved in other people’s lives and kind of, uh, link things together, yeah.
21:37 KG: And what had made you … I know you’d failed your A-Levels, but had you always had an interest in people, or?
21:47 RW: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I suppose if I go back to family, erm, my mum, erm, was, painted a lot, erm, my dad loved photography, erm, and as he was retraining to be a teacher at the age of 45, he was doing lots of photography, so he just used to, he gave me a camera, he put a film in it, I shot it, and bless him, he processed the entire thing and printed every single image, so I think I was probably grabbed by photography at that time, and then definitely art, I mean, my mum used to drag me off to… all over the place, she even took me to France, erm, you know, to look at galleries and things like that, erm, so, yeah, I come from that kind of, I guess, probably quite socially aware, and also, kind of definitely visually aware kind of background through painting and photography. Er, my dad taught drama, so, we used to have a lots of kind of, yeah, kind of…
22:37 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
22:37 RW: I, maybe the drama and the performative elements came together, maybe later on, when I was photographing things, uh, but yeah, that was-
22:44 KG: And storytelling.
22:46 RW: Yeah, yeah, definitely, like in the narratives, that, yeah, and I’m still, I still love, erm, that, those kind of performances, those weird performances and things that kind of, I mean, we’re in Lincolnshire now, I photographed something called the Hacksey Hood maybe five or six times.
23:01 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
23:03 RW: I can’t believe it’s legal, erm, but the visuals are stunning, and, yeah, how those things are still so important in people’s lives, which, things have changed so much, but it is still, it’s still what people live for on that particular day, yeah,it’s amazing.
23:17 KG: But are you … Is there an awareness about the … Because Russell talked about disappearing behind the camera-
23:24 RW: Oh yeah, distinctly, yeah, no, I mean, the camera is a kind of wall, it’s something you hide behind, yeah, yeah, um, and I wouldn’t ever argue with that, I agree with him entirely, that’s the, it’s the place that you can, you feel safe, and you feel like you’ve got a role and responsibility, but you’re just kind of, you’re safe behind that as well, um, yeah, there would be very few times where I haven’t felt safe behind te camera, but maybe some of the … I did a lot of work looking, um, at kind of the build up of the far right in the early ’80s, the National Front, things like that, and I kind of marched with the, I marched and photographed, and it was kind of a, yeah, I probably at times, I didn’t feel safe, but yeah, and maybe sometimes during the miner’s strike as well, erm, there were times when the camera probably wasn’t enough, big enough shield, erm, or, sometimes a target, to be honest. Um, yeah, sometimes a target, yeah, because you were recording an event where illegal activities were happening, and you had all the evidence-
24:20 KG: On both parts.
24:22 RW: Yeah, yeah, something I kind of warn students about a lot now is, um, then also the authorities are allowed to take your film, your chip, whatever, and use that against people, so, you know, if people see you recording them, then yeah, yeah, it a-
24:36 KG: Really?
24:36 RW: Yeah.
24:36 KG: That’s interesting.
24:37 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s part of a-
24:39 KG: So, being part of, you know, being part of this project, and thinking about revisiting these images that perhaps … Had you forgotten about them?
24:49 RW: Oh, yeah, totally, yeah, I didn’t, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve got probably, what, 24 negative files in the attic, each negative file has probably about a hundred sheets of negatives, yeah, so, yeah, these were just buried away amongst … I don’t think, what was alongside them? There was a whole series of photographs of the trite factory in Hull, which I’d completely forgotten I’d taken, they were beautiful images, they were [they chuckle], um, and yeah, uh, so-
25:13 KG: There’s a beautiful one of the man holding the, with the pigeon picture.
25:16 RW: Oh, yes, yeah, there was a series of stills I did, there was a film made called Homing, erm, by Mike Stubbs who used to run something in Hull, which I can’t remember what it was, but yeah, yeah.
25:29 KG: Yeah, anyway.
25:29 RW: Yeah, erm, and yeah, and that allowed me to kind of photograph what was a very brutal, um, sport, pastime, whatever, um, the homing pigeons, yeah, it was a, it was a really interesting, again, and it was on Orchard Park estate, I seem to remember, and I photographed in Orchard Park a lot after that, photographed a lot of kind of the kids and kind of what they were up to, yeah, yeah, again, in those days, that wasn’t a problem, I don’t think I’d nowadays wander up to Orchard Park estate and try to photograph kids, it’s kind of a… but, uh, yeah, society moves on, and things get, uh, demonised, I suppose, I think I would say.
26:06 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
26:08 RW: Yeah. I … It’s, um, no, I’d completely forgotten about them, erm, and I guess you don’t realise the importance of that history, you don’t realise the importance of these kind of early images that are the starting points for much bigger questions, um, and it kind of prompted me to kind of revisit a lot of the work, especially the work maybe, um, say around the rise of the right in the ’80s, and some of the work I made in Berlin just after the Wall had come down as well, um, which, yeah, very, very specific, but talk about much bigger, bigger stories, and kind of reflect much bigger political and social issues, I guess, so yeah.
26:51 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Um, I mean, I’m curious to know, were you also taking photographs socially, like would you go out with your camera?
27:00 RW: No.
27:00 KG: Was it always a work … do you think you were a professional photographer, as it were?
27:05 RW: Did, no, I probably did go out with my camera, um, I guess the Adelphi, which was probably my go-to pub, um, bless him, Paul, who sadly just died, which is very sad, erm, I always took a camera to the Adelphi, so, um, yeah, I, and I was kind of, I did other things as well, I did other jobs as well, there was a magazine that opened, um, two people came down from London and started a magazine, I can’t remember what it was called, and I got one or two kind of commercial jobs, so I photographed John Prescott, um, uh, on his yacht, um, and with his Jaguars, and he was, you know, he’s a lovely bloke, but, and yeah, they got published. I photographed, uh, Roland Gift, who just happened to live next door to me anyway, but, um, I photographed him for this magazine. I wish I could remember what it was called, but, uh, so yeah, I did do kind of … Oh, and I did, um, some record stuff as well, some audio stuff, um, there was a group called Space Maid, um, who I did some promotional work for, um, who later on John Biele said was his favourite group, so can’t be bad. Um, so, yeah, I mean, there were those kind of work, and then, ah, I probably did have a camera with me a lot, I should, I suppose, once I bought my Leica from Martin Park. I just dropped that in.
28:24 KG: Do you want to say about that?
28:25 RW: Yeah, yeah, okay, so, getting to Level 3, I wanted a new camera, sorry, sorry, uh, third year, I left the six so I wanted a new camera.
28:32 KG: Yeah.
28:33 RW: And Daniel said, “oh, I’ve got a mate who’s selling a camera, he lives in Wallasey, he wants about 300 quid for it, and it’s a Leica M4.” I mean, Leica M4 didn’t mean anything to me, but if Daniel said it was a good camera, I’d, I went to buy it, so I took a train over, and then a ferry over to Wallasey from Liverpool, um, with £300 you know kind of in an elastic band in my pocket, and got to this really strange house in Wallasey, and I remember a big glass cabinet full of Elvis Presley singing boxes, you know they kind of, you wind them up and Elvis Presley’s there and they kind of play a tune, and I was a little bit dubious about the man, especially when I got the camera, when it didn’t have a lens on it, so I was a bit shocked there, I thought it might come with a lens, but anyway, handed over my 300 quid, and then kind of came back home and found a lens and started using it, and then Martin Parr started to become quite famous. Bad Weather was the first thing I remember clearly, and I’ve got a, I think everybody’s got a signed copy from that, um, and yeah, it was really nice to have, a little bit in, to do with Martins kind of work, and Martins work, it’s really sweet, actually, last year, one of my students, um, went to the, went to, uh, an event at, um, Bristol, yeah, to the Parr centre, and his train was delayed by two hours, so just as he got there, the event finished, and he was a little upset, and he kind of rummaged around the bookshop a bit, and then this bloke came up to him, and said, you know, “what are you here for?” and he said, “oh, I’ve just come from Leeds, I came to the event,” and the bloke said, “oh, I’ll show you around,” and after about three or four minutes, he suddenly realised it was Daniel, who, sorry, it was Martin, who was showing him round, um, which was so sweet, um, yeah, and he had a bit of a dialogue with him as well, it was like such a nice, uh, almost like a cyclic thing-
30:18 KG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:20 RW: -and I obviously tell all the students that this Leica belonged to Martin Parr, um, so, yeah, he knew-
30:24 KG: Rub it.
30:26 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he knew that I, in fact, he mentioned to, um, sorry, Martin, then that he’d, uh, that I’d got the Leica, yeah.
30:34 KG: Yeah, so, I mean, there’s two questions I want to ask. One is the influence of teachers, I guess, and the idea of these people that still continue to have some sort of impact on the way you work or the way you photograph-
30:47 RW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
30:47 KG: -or at least, critically allow you to reflect, perhaps, on how you want to work, like-
30:53 RW: Yeah.
30:53 KG: -you don’t just want to snap people, you don’t want to just other people, you want to engage in a different way with them-
30:58 RW: Yeah.
30:58 KG: -and thinking about, yeah, their impact, yeah, do you, what would you say … As a teacher who’s clearly having impact on students, do you … What is it about that … Is there, is it exciting to think about that? Is it important, the role of this…?
31:21 RW: As an educator?
31:22 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
31:22 RW: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it’s incredibly important, there’s, as an educator, the course I teach on at Leeds is a very, very broad course, um, you have students who are moving to … Well, we’ve recently had a student who’s graduated and become the picture editor for Vogue, you know, so it’s … The notion of photography and lens-based mediums are very broad, they all study photography, they all kind of think about the genres they want to work in, but the students who are working in the kind of editorial, documentary genre, I guess, I probably shouldn’t say this, but are going to be my favourite students, obviously, um, and that, and their approach, um, is very, very interesting to me, and it’s, yeah, the dialogues we have around that kind of representation, social practice, and there’s one student, who actually is the student who went to see Martin Parr, um, who’s doing a whole series of clubs, shoots of nightclubs, um, and he very much sees himself outside of that, he’s a student who wouldn’t go out drinking, wouldn’t go out clubbing, he’s a very interesting individual, um, and he’s having a lot of questions in his head about why he’s making photographs on Fruity Friday, um, of people, he’s having, as we go through his contact sheets, um, in a kind of, almost like in the way I, you know, Dan, uh, we did with Daniel, um, you know, the ones that are spinning out to him are the moments of intimacy, which is catching, and got almost voyeuristic, and we’re kind of talking about the issues of ethically around this, but at the same time, the images are stunning, and yeah, what is it he wants to communicate about this, how he recognises his personal motivations and his personal kind of, uh, approaches, um, and kind of how to almost justify selecting these images which are of other people having intimate moments in clubs and he is very much outside this, um, and is, you know, is a way of kind of legitimising it in a sense, and yeah, there’s a, um, yeah, those dialogues are really interesting.
33:24 KG: Yeah, and I guess this, I mean, you were photographing very intimate things in the past, do you know what I mean?
33:30 RW: Yeah.
33:30 KG: Your very early things about being somewhere intimately, phyysically intimate, and also, you know, conceptually, all the things that thye were doing, all of these moments, and not legitimising, but they, to me, they seem, ah, well, we’ve had this conversation about what … If you hadn’t have done it, how could we know it existed, you know what I mean?
33:55 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah yeah.
33:57 KG: The recording of a time.
33:58 RW: Yep, yeah, yeah. I agree entirely, I think, um, yeah, if these hadn’t been photographed, filmed, whatever, then something would’ve been lost distinctly, um, and I guess recognising a process of how things become – so a lot of the work, um, I, we, the staff have a staff exhibition at the beginning of every year, and I kind of go through my archive, I find something that I want to make an image of, and then I use my archive as a kind of mirror almost, and a lot of these, um, recently have been around, um, why people kind of march, why people kind of get together as groups and want to change things, and you see this kind of process of people marching, then laws being shifted, because of the imagery of the … not the conflicts, but of the kind of the depth of feeling, let’s say, and then, you know, things change legally, and then things become better, hopefully, so-
35:00 KG: And photography has an incredible, that’s what you’re saying-
35:03 RW: Oh, yes, yeah.
35:04 KG: That’s what you’re saying is photography has a more important role, maybe, then the march?
35:07 RW: Yeah, oh, yeah, I think so, yeah, because, I mean, it stays, and it’s kind of recorded, it’s kind of evidenced through that in a sense, erm, and it, yeah, i think it’s, these notions of kind of, uh, oh, yeah, there’s a whole exhibition, uh, on tour at the moment, a Steve McQueen exhibition, um, Resistance is it called? Yeah, I think so, yeah, so I mean, which absolutely validates that, yeah, that photography is the thing that kind of perpetuates this, that stays, it’s always there, um, so, yeah, it promotes this idea of change, so I guess, um, if I look at … I mean, I don’t know, I’m not involved with, um, the gay scene at all, but I guess a lot of my students, you know, are gay, and they kind of talk about the kind of acceptance, um, you know, they’re not fighting to be accepted anymore, you know, it’s, you know, if anything, you know, it’s, you know, the kind of, the recognition of that is, yeah, there’s no questions anymore, so, I think that kind of process of people like Kandy kind of exploring that in a very, very subtle way, because you had to be very careful, I guess, about that, but those steps become part of something that everybody becomes acceptance of, hopefully.
36:21 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
36:21 RW: Yeah, yeah.
36:22 KG: Yeah, that’s, um, and, but, I’m not sure we set out with … Do you think that’s how … That’s definitely not what you were taught.
36:29 RW: Definitely not what I was, no, no, no , no, no, I was just after a good photograph, no, I was just after something that was exciting, slightly unusual that other people might want to look at, um, for a variety of reasons, you know, I mean, no, no, yeah, but once again, I will full accept that I othered, not that there was a word ‘othering’ in those days, um, but at the same time, you know, I never pointed a camera at somebody without them wanting, without them knowing I was doing it, you know?
36:53 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
36:53 RW: I always asked, I always was involved, I always researched, I always found out about what was happening, um, before I photographed, so-
37:01 KG: Where were you looking? In the newspapers, or on posters?
37:04 RW: Erm, yeah, it’d be newspapers, just, yeah billboards, um, word of mouth, mainly, um, you know, you’re sort of just talking to people in an audience, and so, yeah, you maybe should go and try this, or, oh yeah, talking to people like Wally Mays and promoters and things like that, and he would say, “oh, yeah, next week is a boxing match, you want to come photograph it?” um, so, yeah, just being there, and being open to the kind of, sort of-
37:25 KG: And were those venues … Was the Tower, Wally, then taking the, for using the photographs?
37:30 RW: [he chuckles] No, no, no. No, no, no, it was just a totally one-way thing, it was bizarre, yeah, and you know, I’d’ve more than happily let him, um, use them, um, but-
37:39 KG: They never asked?
37:40 RW: They never asked, no, no, you know, and similarly, with things like the Adelphi, you know, I photographed a lot of bands that became famous, um, but no, he never really asked for any of them, so, yeah, it’s a … yeah, different days, maybe, I don’t know, yeah, if it was shot digitally it would be so easy-
37:57 KG: But what-
37:58 RW: -just to drop him a file, but, uh, yeah, it’s, yeah-
37:59 KG: Yeah, or share it on Instagram, putting it out there, and-
38:02 RW: -but in those days, it was, no, yeah, you’d have to make a print, and then you’d have to print it-
38:05 KG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:05 RW: -yeah, yeah, yeah, so, yeah.
38:08 KG: And, um, yeah, I mean, that makes me think that there must be so many photographs in people’s … Just students that you were with that were taking photographs-
38:15 RW: Yeah, yeah.
38:17 KG: -that nobody’s ever seen, that never got back … But also, I guess what I was thinking then was the encouragement of a young person to do something, did it feel, was it about that he could see you were a young student? Or a young photographer? Or do you think there was a … What do you think was the motivation for needing it recorded?
38:42 RW: Oh, so, for them to actually say yes, or?
38:45 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
38:45 RW: Ah, I think quite often, they were kind of recognising that they had been promoting these things, that they had been generating what was happening, so any form of recognition was positive, um, you know, when I went in there, I was always very positive about what was happening in front of me, you know, there’s this really exciting, you know, boxing matches, uh, really exciting, and from the boxing matches I went back to the clubs and photographed them in the clubs and where they trained and things like that, to the point where they actually asked me if I wanted to spar once, but, uh, [he chuckles] I turned them down [he chuckles]. They were big lads. Um, so I think, yeah, I think people were proud of what they showed, proud of what they were promoting, what they were organising, so I think, yeah, anybody who goes in with a positive attitude, um, and asks questions, and becomes interested, I think, is, uh, yeah.
39:34 KG: Yeah, pride, that’s an interesting word.
39:37 RW: But yeah, I think a lot of the, you know, thinking about the range of things we photographed, the six of us that I can remember, um, you know, students photographing travellers and Gypsies, um, Steve photographing the transvestite and transsexual kind of development of generations in and around Liverpool and Hull, yeah, there’s so much history there, so much, um, that, yeah, there’s lots of archives to be made from those, I think, yeah, definitely, yeah.
40:04 KG: And where were you living at this point? Were you in Hull, were you?
40:07 RW: Yeah.
40:08 KG: What?
40:09 RW: I was living in kind of student accommodation with my then partner, yeah, yeah, so, yeah, it was right in the middle of it all, basically yeah, yeah.
40:16 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And when did you leave Hull?
40:18 RW: Um, when did I leave Hull? Probably 35 years ago, yeah, yeah.
40:23 KG: Whenever that was.
40:24 RW: Whenever that was, yeah.
40:25 KG: ’90?
40:26 RW: Yeah, in the ’90s, yes, yeah, and not really been back very much, um, yeah, yeah, I think I had that conversation prior to this about that notion of reminiscing, uh, which I really don’t like, I find it really difficult, but I guess if there’s a focus, if there’s a genuine, something outside me, probably, um, which is much more important, then that’s, that kind of legitimises it again, but, um, but yeah, Hull, yeah, Hull is a place, and maybe I should mention revisiting the last year, last show of, um, Bobby Mandrell, um, which was the last time I went to Hull, and it, I, on the way there, I felt very uncomfortable, um, during the performance I felt very uncomfortable, and I probably left quite early because I felt uncomfortable, um, and then I got lost in Hull on the way back, and I felt even more uncomfortable, [he chuckles] um, took me ages to get home, um, so I, yeah, there’s something, there is something about revisiting spaces and places that you’ve become … I mean, I’d lived in Hull ’til I was, what, thirty? So yeah, um, yeah, there is something about those places, I’m, yeah, there’s something personally that I found really uncomfortable about going back, but, uh, you know, it’s an interesting place, [he chuckles] there’s a lot going on.
41:42 KG: Well, it’s interesting you talk about not wanting to reminisce, but you have hundreds of contact sheets in folders.
41:48 RW: Yeah, which are almost full, I mean, I could, I could spend hours, and when I do go through the negative files trying to find things for the, uh, the staff exhibitions, I find loads of other things that, yeah, I probably don’t want to find and don’t want to be reminded of, erm, but I guess that’s like any family album, it’s just times ten. [he chuckles] Yeah, it’s, uh, because yeah, because mixed in with those kind of work things, there are lots of other things as well, um, yeah.
42:12 KG: So, uh, if you, now we’ve had this conversation and we’ve thought about your connection to Hull and your past and these photographs and what you did and, I mean, they’re very beautiful photographs that you’ve taken, that you took, and the documenting of something that is, has been very invisible to most people, you know, all of that stuff we’ve just talked about, when you think about that part of your life, what do you think about and reflect and what does it make you feel, or what is the…?
42:46 RW: Er, ah, how does it make me feel? Erm, I guess it was a point in time where I probably had the energy to kind of run all over the country, you know, I kind of had a series of really, really wonderful commissions straight after leaving, um, I spent a year photographing sheep farming in the North Yorkshire Moors, I spent a year photographing the coal industry, erm, comparative faith, um, things like that, so I, you know, a lot of commissions, lot of residencies, and, as I say, a lot of energy to kind of do that, and not … and I don’t think … oh, do I think I’m less inquisitive now. I think I’m probably more selective about what I photograph now, um, and those things I photograph now do have some relationship to what I photographed before, there are definitely inks, erm, so I … 43:42 the most recent body of work I made was on finding a dead Kingfisher, um, in a place we were staying in France, um, talking to the landowner about it, it was perfectly positioned between two gorgeous wooden chairs, um, it looked like it’d been composed, um, talking to the owner, um we found out about the kind of, the lack of rain, um, all the ponds had dried up, the Kingfisher had starved, simple as that, um, so, kind of that notion of environmentalism through, um, exploring environmentalism through photography was in my head, and then I kind of revisited my earlier work and found work that kind of reflected that, and put that alongside that series of work, so, yeah, I’m probably more selective, um, I don’t carry a camera around with me anymore, um, in fact, the last time I carried a camera was to photograph Bobby Mandrell, and that was a Leica that belonged to Martin Parr, and the shutter disintegrated, and, um, yeah, that’s going to cost over a thousand pound to get fixed, so, yeah, I won’t be carrying that around for a while, erm, and I don’t really use my phone to photograph things either, I, yeah, I, it’s sad, innit? I kind of almost stopped making images, um, I see myself as an educator as much as anything else now, um, and you can work with images in a variety of ways and I think-
45:03 KG: But you also have a huge archive of-
45:04 RW: Yeah, I have a huge archive.
45:06 KG: -to draw from-
45:06 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:07 KG: -that could keep you going for another lifetime.
45:09 RW: Easily, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I still occasionally get the yearning to go and photograph some of these bizarre events, you know, I’d like to go back to photograph Hacksey Hood again, um, the penny hedge in Whitby, um, they cut the sticks from that from a very particular wood, which I know quite well, um, because family used to have a house down there, and I’d really like to go and photograph them cutting the sticks, um, for the penny hedge in Whitby, so the thing that, it’s almost like noises off, it’s the things that happen quietly before and maybe quietly after, you know, it’s like the tidying up of a church hall once you’ve had a scarecrow event, you know, it’s those kinds of things, I think, now, rather than … I mean, God, blimey, yes, reflecting on the photographs that Daniel showed us, millions of years ago, uh, of his trip to photograph, I think it … Oh, wait, no, it wasn’t, it was John … It wasn’t who I think it is. So it was … Oh, it was a really famous guitar player whose name’s completely escaped me, but he came back, and he proudly announced that he hadn’t taken one photograph of him playing his guitar, um, which really annoyed the Times, I think, ’cause the Times had commissioned it, he’d also, in the first week, shot fifteen rolls of film, and I think the Times had then limited him to one roll a day, um, who was it? Julian Bream, Julian Bream, yeah.
46:24 KG: Yeah.
46:24 RW: And I’ve got a photograph that Daniel took of that, in fact, it’s just Julian Bream playing cricket [he chuckles], of all things, um, and I think maybe, that idea that you don’t go for the obvious, yeah, you look for things associated with which maybe tell even a more interesting story, that, yeah, that’s maybe stuck with me, um, yeah, all those years. All those years! Yeah.
46:49 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Great. Yeah, um, obviously, you went to different venues as well, you went to the Tower, what, was there any other venues on, you know, at docklands, Hessle Road that you remember? Like you photographed Bobby and Kandy in?
47:07 RW: Oh…
47:07 KG: Would it be the Alexandra?
47:09 RW: Yeah, the Alexandra, yeah, I think we mentioned the Alexandra as part of the interview, didn’t we, but-
47:13 KG: Do you remember anything about … Was the Alex something that-
47:17 RW: It was-
47:17 KG: -was it for everybody, or did it have a particular…?
47:22 RW: No, I think the audience were the kind of locals there, and I think from, probably from Hessle Road, and that area, um, I just remember the architecture being absolutely beautiful-
47:30 KG: Yeah.
47:30 RW: -and the kind of, uh, what do you call the kind of glass that’s kind of, yeah, not stained glass, but kind of, you know-
47:36 KG: No, but like a smoked glass, yeah.
47:37 RW: Yeah, yeah, um, and, yeah, kind of the dark wood interior, it was, um, yeah, it was beautiful, but yeah, I’m not sure if it’s still the same, –
47:44 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
47:44 RW: -but uh, it’s a, yeah it is? Yeah. Just kind of stands out as a piece of stunning architecture in that kind of area, um, any, yeah, any others…?
47:54 KG: And then the Polar Bear, you would go to the Polar Bear?
47:56 RW: Yeah, yeah, no, it was, uh, Polar Bear was more for sort of personal sort of drinking, all the kind of small bars down that street, um, I don’t remember performances in any of those necessarily, um, I think the selection process was down to beer and the jukebox, nothing, uh, yeah, nothing else.
48:14 KG: And then you’ve mentioned where you would’ve shown photographs?
48:17 RW: Oh, yeah, so at Posterngate Gallery, um, so I spent a year photographing homelessness and alternative housing, I forget who funded that, but, um, uh, and that was an exhibition at Posterngate Gallery, um, uh, which was a really lively venue, I remember, oh, I invited everybody who I photographed as well, I managed to get invites to, um, yeah, everybody, and the wine went very quickly [he chuckles], it was a [he chuckles], yeah, it was good-
48:42 KG: And who ran that?
48:43 RW: That was somebody called Mick Faterinni, um, at that time, um, who I said I think I went from the Crescent Arts workshop in Scarborough to run that, um, so yeah, it was a-
48:53 KG: And they set that up as a photography gallery?
48:56 RW: I’m not sure if it was specifically photography, I think that was a gallery, and I think they kind of offered commissions, um, as well, they kind of generated commissions from it, so, uh, so I think it was more of a kind of generic arts gallery, but no, just happened to be the space where I exhibited. Yeah, I remember, actually, printing the work, getting the work up, and then Mick putting it on the walls. He was curator, and then, um, I kind of looked at it, and it didn’t make any sense at all, so I came back that night and re-hung it, um, apparently he was looking for me the next day, but [he chuckles].
49:30 KG: Where else would you be showing your work in Hull, do you remember?
49:33 RW: Um, I’d quite often get stuff into the Ferens Open, um, black and white photographs, which was, um, I mean, I think the Ferens still has an open call, um, uh, where else?
49:45 KG: What would you have done as students in the university? Where did you show … Did you show work in the college?
49:51 RW: Yeah, well, there was stuff in the college, actually, yeah, and then there was the college, um, but again, it’s interesting, as a photography degree, all it really was was taking photographs and talking about photographs, the kind of-
50:03 KG: Display.
50:04 RW: -the ethics, the before, the display, the making money, yeah, the ethics just wasn’t part of the discussion, so, um, although, you know, they did help me with like applying for commissions, and kind of, um, applying for funding, so, yeah, there was some of that toward the end, but, ah, I mean the idea of following Daniel and kind of working for, you know, the Times, or working for the, well, whoever, didn’t seem likely, but, uh, so the, yeah, it was, at the end of the degree, I mean, nowadays, when we’re teaching degrees, you know, by the time students get into Level 6, they know what they want to do, they’ve already started making connections externally, they’re making bodies of work which are relevant for the audiences and agencies, they’re looking to … In those days, not really, no, no I was in a darkroom ’til the day before the end of year showing, you know, and that was it, and I didn’t really have a clue afterwards. There was a heritage place that you just reminded me, um, I can’t remember what it was called, but somewhere toward the docks, and the one year I was unemployed, and I was a photographer for them, and I photographed lots of kind of the industries that were kind of dying there, oh when, so what … That was a year before I went off to photograph sheep farming, so I have no idea when that would be, but probably early ’80s, um, so I got to photograph things like, um, fish curing, uh, the McConaugheys, and the docks were still just working, so, some kind of work around the docks, um, trite factories, bizarre things like that, uh, so a lot of the industries in Hull which kind of weren’t really seen. Scrap metal I seem to remember was a big thing, as well. So yeah, um, that was really interesting, because they kind of paid for materials, and then the work went to them, um, it was run by some really, really interesting Scottish bloke, but I … Sorry, names completely escape me. But I don’t know, and I have no idea where that archive went or who ran it, um, but that was, yeah, that was kind of a useful year, I guess, for making work, and just being able to stick your nose anywhere in Hull and take photographs, yeah.
52:00 KG: So that skill of being able to do that must’ve come from being a student, and-
52:05 RW: Oh, yeah.
52:05 KG: -turning up and asking the question, and-
52:07 RW: Yeah, yeah, well, just turning up-
52:08 KG: -being positive.
52:09 RW: -quite often. We, um, and I suppose one of the parts of my process is trying to turn up without a camera to begin with, um, because, yeah, I know, people react, respond to cameras differently, so just to go and touch your interest, and then ask if it’s okay to, say, “yeah, I’ll bung you a couple of prints if you’re interested,” so, yeah, yeah, that was kind of the way it worked, and I can’t ever remember being turned down by anybody, apart from one religious group when I was doing the comparative religion shot who said, “what are you doing a group, there’s no such thing as comparative religion, there only is one religion, it’s ours,” [Kate chuckles] I thought, “right, okay, maybe I won’t photograph you.” [he chuckles]. That’s the only time I remember firmly being told no, so, yeah, yeah.
52:51 KG: Yeah, it just struck me then that with, of where people were showing work at that time in the city what was happening around-
52:59 RW: Yeah, there was, I mean, I … Oh, it’s a long time, such a long time ago. There was, um, a small kind of arts gallery/workshop place, um, oh, racking me brains to think what it was, where it was, I really can’t remember, but it was somewhere with an independent darkroom which we used after we graduated, um, and I think it was somebody called Bill Stevenson, um, who worked with large format and did a series of really beautiful portraits of workers in and around Hull, and I’ve seen some of his work in permanent collections, um, since, but yeah, Posterngate was probably one of the best outlets, um, but yeah, nothing that springs to mind, not like nowadays, no, you have nowadays, you know, students who are kind of a means of options to show their work and so, yeah.
53:51 KG: Hmm, I’m not, I mean, I think they have some options, I think it’s still hard to, but also how it’s DIY, like you would’ve just, you’ve got to just do stuff for yourself, haven’t you?
54:01 RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I, showing work in kind of a, in some of the places where you photographed it was quite nice, taking the work back to those places, um, uh, yeah, then there’s a really good publication somewhere that … I forget who publishes it, that, um, indicates what they galleries interests are, and what their ethics are, and what their kind of general area of kind of … Because when I photographed the end of, when I finished photographing the end of comparative faith and religion, um, there’s, uh, something called the Bar Convent in York, which took on the whole exhibition, which was really nice, and exhibited that for a year, and they, you know, they weren’t all Christian 54:35 and everything, I think 2% were Christian, and then other things were a much more kind of Pagan acts of faith, so it was, uh, it was nice that they took it on, yeah, yeah.
54:44 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
