The Descendants at the Photography Oxford Festival

The passing of time is a very funny thing indeed and often there are unintended consequences.

 Let me explain…..

I started shooting The Descendants series nearly 10 years ago, okay it did well at the time but I have always had a nagging doubt that perhaps it didn't do quite as well as I hoped it would, particularly in terms of mainstream attention.

Just after the final hanging of the prints I realise I look nothing like Napoleon...

I was talking to an old journalist friend of mine Andrew Morgan who I worked with on the Sunday Telegraph, he told me about the upcoming Photography Oxford Festival run by a friend of his Robin Laurence, I mentioned The Forest series which is the closest thing I have to a current series at the moment. I got in touch with Robin, and told him about The Forest series.

We had a chat about it and although he liked the images he was concerned that he wouldn't have a space big enough to show them. And that would have been that.

He then called back saying he'd had a look on my website and he really liked The Descendants photographs and could he show them in the inaugural Photography Oxford Festival?

 At first I was a little skeptical, after all it was quite a while ago and in my mind I have moved on to other things, or partially at least as you will see from the next blog post, after a little arm-twisting I decided to go ahead.

 It's been a very busy period in my photography business as you will see I have jumped into a whole different style of photography (which I will be talking more about soon) and that has been getting most of my attention.

 In the run-up to the Oxford Photography Festival Robin and his team sent out some PR about the Festival which features the work of Bernard Plossu, Laura El-Tantway, Masie Maud Broadhead, Mariana Cook, Pentti Sammallahti, Vel Grano, Arno Minkkinen, Mark Laita, Yann Layma, Mimi Mollica, Robin Hammond, Susanna Majuri, Rory Carnegie, Rachel Edgar, David Rhys Jones, World Press Photo, Paddy Summerfield, Richard Davis and Joanna Vestey.

The Times Saturday Magazine picked it up and ran a four page feature on The Descendants project.

descendants pdf 1

To say I was delighted is an understatement, I had wanted mainstream for the project and boy did I get it first with the exhibition and then with the Saturday Times Magazine.

 And it didn't end there.

This week I found myself sitting in Broadcasting House for a live interview with Dan Damon on the BBC World Service's World Update programme talking about the project.

Very Purple Mic in BBC World service studio

Here is the interview

https://soundcloud.com/photogardner/the-descendents-on-world-update

Just goes to show that you can let a project go in your mind but it doesn't mean the rest of the world has.

There is some really fantastic photography being exhibited at the Photography Oxford Festival and while it is a little unfair to pick a favourite, I particularly like the work of Susanna Majuri

If have any interest at all in photography I would urge you to go along to the festival which runs until October 5th in some truly beautiful venues around Oxford.

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