Artist Residency at W W Winter Photography Ltd the longest running photography studio in the UK.

In 2013 I created a self-initiated artist residency at WW Winter Photography Ltd, working with and making responses from their glass plate collection. This residency was funded by Arts Council England and Derby City Council.

Throughout WW Winter Photography’s long history they have explored and innovated in every form of photography, from ambrotypes to gas light enlargers, dry plate to digital and everything in between.

On my very first visit to Winter’s I was told of a story that during World War II there was a glass shortage, and as part of the ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign W W Winter Photography gave many of their large glass plate negatives to the Derby public to be made into greenhouses. This story of the Derby public gardening and growing fruit and veg under negative portraits was captivating, the image of negative greenhouses across the city was an enchanting one, and one that had to be re-made.

The images used to make the greenhouse are from negatives discovered behind a false wall at W W Winter’s, it seemed fitting to use these beautifully decayed images to echo the negatives that are now missing from their archive due to being given away to be made into greenhouses.

The exhibition which was recently exhibited at FORMAT International Photography in March 2015, brings together two visual stories of the Winter’s archive. The negative greenhouse and the second story Derby Anon is one of the tens of thousands of unprovenanced glass plate portraits held at Winter’s. I invited people who share a physical resemblance to a Winter’s portrait to be photographed against the same backdrop, in the same studio, on glass, just as the original portrait was taken.

By pairing people through time, we draw a little closer to the original portrait sitter, seeing through the aesthetic of a different era to the person they might once have been.