Critical Studies

 The Ordinary talk  

After our talk on the ordinary we've been asked to find two examples of artists who either make work with or about ordinary things. Ill be looking at some of the photos by Ewen Spencer.

Ewen Spencer is a British photographer and filmmaker but I'll be focusing on a few images from his book "While you were sleeping". Spencer took images of the 90s club scene, he would travel around London on the weekends visiting different venues photographing the nightlife and different subcultures for various different magazines and publications. This book came around as his son found the images and asked his dad when these were taken, he replied "when you were sleeping". When these images were taken spencer was going away all weekend down to London and returning Monday morning to take care of his young son back in Brighton. 

These images focused on nightlife and partying all act as little snapshots or glimpses into the night of an ordinary young person.  A lot of these images to me are so captivating as they seem to be completely raw showing the awkward faces of mid conversation and people just caught in a glimpse of drunken happiness. The fact that he travelled from venue to venue from big clubs to  more underground places, garage to punk he managed to capture the nights of varyingly different people and there activities. Spencer may have focused down on a specific area and subject for his photography but ultimately as a whole his subject was still the activities of the life of ordinary youth. I personally really enjoy this book and collection of photographs, they feel like a documentation of time and ordinary history in an intriguing and human way.