Stephen Gill | Archaeology in reverse

Archaeology in Reverse was photographed in Stephen's "cherished" area in East London. He photographed this project with the camera that he brought a Hackney Wick market for 50p, focusing of things that do not yet exist. It features traces and clues of things to come in a poetic, sometimes eerie and quiet photographic study of a place in limbo prior to the rapid transformation that this area faced during the build-up to the Olympics in 2012.

“Stephen Gill has learnt this: to haunt the places that haunt him. His photo-accumulations demonstrate a tender vision factored out of experience; alert, watchful, not overeager, wary of that mendacious conceit, ‘closure’. There is always flow, momentum, the sense of a man passing through a place that delights him. A sense of stepping down, immediate engagement, politic exchange. Then he remounts the bicycle and away. Loving retrievals, like a letter to a friend, never possession… What I like about Stephen Gill is that he has learnt to give us only as much as we need, the bones of the bones of the bones…" -Iain Sinclair

Many of the photographs in this project are out of focus and blurred to the human eye, creating a soft focus as you can still see what everything in the images are, they just appear a lot softer due to not being in focus, the edges of objects merging together. These images display objects and part of scenery in a popular city which appears to be not as loved as other parts of the city, documenting imperfections that people don't often see or tend to overlook and act as if these things aren't there. However Gill has photographed the subject straight on showing the unromantic side to the city and showing it in a time where things are beginning to change, before it's reconstruction to show how the place once was before it was developed, it shows that how "unpretty" places may seem they can be adapted and good made from them rather than leaving them to waste away. Shows how us as humans always see the chance for adapting and changing areas before us.

Sources:

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/3375/Stephen-Gill-Archaeology-in-Reverse/240