Post Conversation Portraits

Suddenly, it seemed time to put faces to voices. Hence, a number of reunions followed to give stature to the silhouetted selves that had settled into their respective conversations. Time to capture each individual should, I thought, be short. Otherwise there was a danger of each becoming over posed, over poised. Hence, each sitting had an allotted timeframe of 10 minutes. Some were inevitably shorter.  The stipulation for the location of each asked that each individual decided and settled on 'their Margate'. This manifests in a series of Margates made theirs for a number of reasons: ownership, habit, the momentousness of place or just palpable love for a certain space.

The results are as follows:

Ron, in his room full of ever changing chairs. It had altered since the last time we sat here for our conversation, more chairs, different chairs, some of the same chairs. He sat with inimitable ease.

Rox, in her "office", so called because she spends much of her time sitting in this doorway, working out her thoughts. We quickly brought the "office" that had so often assembled itself in her imagination to life.

Andrew, outside Giorgio's. From this point you can see the Clocktower, the stretch leading to the train station and Margate Sands; a panorama in parallel.

Iris, in the spot that she decisively stated that Turner Contemporary should make its way from a vision to a reality. That, it truly has.

Louise, at the Lido. Testament to her tendency to explore and underscore Margate's occasionally, forgotten beauty.

Alex, at his first piece of public art work 'Telling the Truth Through False Teeth', 312 identically smashed windows in Hackney. Not Margate, not quite yet. It was here that he let the light in on his then undiscovered will to take art out of the studio. The beginnings of his Margate before he even knew it.

Ally, at the bar from which she so often observes congregations of shimmy-shakers and the changing seascape that Morgan's confronts.

All photographs taken by Moya Stirrup.

Next conversation coming soon...