ON A GOOD DAY, YOU CAN SEE FRANCE (2021)

(aka ‘Hands, Faces, Ramsgate: The Year Christmas Was Cancelled’)

Urban photography in Ramsgate, Kent

➔ STORY

An anxious time

March 2020. A year’s worth of tour dates cancelled, I’m stuck in my old home of Tucson, Arizona. It takes me six months to return to Ramsgate, a small coastal town in Kent, England where I’ve been based since 2017.

From October 2020 to the start of the vaccination campaign in April 2021, I photograph daily the town’s collective dealings with successive tiered restrictions.

That winter, the Alpha variant (also known as the Kent variant for our region) rips through the world. Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, launches the slogan ‘hands, face, space’ but Christmas is still cancelled with a few days’ notice when infection rates shoot up. It is a strange and anxious time, and I don’t want to not feel it.

By summer, I have tens of thousands of photographs and I go big, very big when the time comes to share my work with the people of Ramsgate.

‘The Fence’: a memorial installation

I create a large-scale outdoors memorial site I call ‘the fence’, a 60-meter long public installation made from 100 images printed four times each on four different sizes of paper plus 5 essential images on very large Dibond direct-to-aluminum plates.

People jog along the ‘fence’, walk their dogs to the secluded western beaches. Port crews drive by the fence on their way to the harbour and teenagers roar by on their mopeds. It is a magical place that invites people to slow down and reflect: a space for a community reckoning about the first eighteen months of the pandemic.

The ‘fence’ is accessible 24/7 for two months to anyone for free. It is located in an appropriate no-man’s land that consists of huge rock boulders (parking prevention blocks), sand, and metal fencing, and is located behind what had been the town’s Covid testing center.

It is effective. Ramsgate people see it and we talk, a lot. Read more here.

Aftermath

Soon afterwards, Turner Contemporary in Margate includes the seminal photo of the series, ‘Doris Johnson’ in their 2021 Open group show.

The work is then exhibited in a solo show in Paris in 2022; presented to school children in Ramsgate’ sister city of Conflans Ste Honorine near Paris; exhibited in Glasgow, again as a solo installation, in summer 2022 at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography (where I also curate ‘Planet Thanet’, a full month of Ramsgate/Margate arts & performance events providing context to the work); a book is self-published (now sold out) with funding from Creative Scotland. In 2023 the series gets a second solo Glasgow exhibition (SaltSpace Gallery) and in Edinburgh (Agitate Gallery). 

➔ SHOWS & EXHIBITIONS (Ramsgate series only)

  • Solo outdoor installation - ‘Hands, Faces, Ramsgate: The Year Christmas Was Cancelled’ - Ramsgate Festival of Sound, Ramsgate UK - Summer 2021

  • Groupe show - Turner Contemporary, Margate UK - November 2021

  • Group show - Laurent Delaye Gallery, Ramsgate, UK - November 2021

  • Permanent public outdoor exhibition - ‘Doris Johnson’, ‘Manston’, ‘Christmas Window’ - Ramsgate harbour, Ramsgate, UK - from November 2021

  • Permanent public exhibition - ‘Fuck Bojo’ - Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate, UK - from November 2021

  • Solo show - ‘Par beau temps, on voit la France: photographie de rue à Ramsgate dans le Kent à l’hiver 2021’ - Salon du cinéma Louxor, Paris, France. Scenography: Bastien Forestier - Jan-March 2022

  • Solo show - ‘On A Good Day, You Can See France: Ramsgate Winter 2021’ - The Glasgow Gallery of Photography, Glasgow, UK. Scenography: Bastien Forestier - Summer 2022

  • Solo show - SaltSpace Gallery, Glasgow, UK - June 2023

  • Solo show - Agitate Gallery, Edinburgh, UK - Septembre 2023


➔ PHOTOBOOKS