In 2014 the Manchester-based artist and designer Alan J. Ward bought a collection of quarter-plate glass negatives on a whim from an eBay seller in Brighton. The negatives had no provenance, and there are about 230 in total, dating from 1914 through to the 50s. Through clues offered up in the images and the original boxes they came in, he pieced together the beginnings of a substantial lost family history that seemed strangely to parallel his own.
Published in 2019 by Dewi Lewis in conjunction with Axis Projects, Photographs from Another Place grew out of that collection. Through a forensic research process, and an almost voyeuristic obsession with the material, new photographic work evolved in response to the locations, subjects and objects in the images. Intrigued by the odd and easily overlooked elements and repeating motifs of the collection, Ward explores the forgotten, lost, ordinary and extraordinary distant voices and still lives of the archive. The book includes a companion text by author George Szirtes, “Gearing: a coincidence,” and an interview between Alan Ward and archivist David Govier, “Unlocking the boxes,” which explores the role of research in contemporary artistic practice.
Ward is an artist, designer and collaborator based in Manchester, UK. His personal projects and photographic works are based around the subject of “place” and “loss.” His published works include Breaking Ground (Axis Projects), short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2017; Citizen Manchester (Manchester University Press), a two-year artist residency with Dan Dubowitz; and Telling the Fractures (Axis Projects), a collaboration with poet Helen Tookey. He has recently completed a major sculptural public art commission with artist Neville Gabie for Cambridge City Council, celebrating the birthplace of the “1848 Cambridge Rules.”
The book is a softback of 240 pages, 240mm x 170mm, with 38 colour and 78 black-and-white archival photographs plus numerous contextual images. ISBN 978-1-911306-52-8.
