David Moore on representation, the guilt-inducing, transgressive nature of documentary photography, his influential degree project, Pictures from the Real World and why 30 years after it, he wrote a piece of verbatim theatre to help him deal with his discomfort over all those things.
David Moore is a London based photographic artist once described as belonging to "the second wave of new colour documentary in Britain". He has exhibited and published internationally and has work held in public and private collections. David has worked as a photographer and educator since graduating from West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham, in 1988 and he is currently the Course Leader of MA Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at the University of Westminster
David’s 2017/18 project ‘Lisa and John’ responds to the archive of his influential 1988 graduation project, Pictures from the real world - which was published as a book in 2011 - and employs theatre, installation, and collaboration. Lisa and John was launched at Format International Photography Festival in 2017, and included a theatrical play, The Lisa and John Slideshow, written and directed by David. The entire Lisa and John Project was exhibited and performed in London and Belfast in 2018 and received widespread acclaim.
Writer, Sean ‘o’ Hagan, wrote: “Moore is such a master of colour that he made me think more than once what William Eggleston's photographs would have looked like had he been born in the north of England rather than the American south.”
David’s current practice addresses agency and a critique of documentary as a genre using installation and theatre as a means posing questions around the production of knowledge through photography.
On episode 115, David discusses, among other things:
HIs formative years growing up in Derby
Why he messed up his exams as a teenager
Being politicised by the music press and the miners strike
Music photography and Management Today magazine being early photographic inspiration
His graduation project, Pictures from the real world
How The Lisa and John Slideshow became a piece of verbatim theatre
Referenced:
Brian Griffin (Ep. 61)
Joel Meyorwitz
Bill Brandt
Ruth Orkin
Lewis Baltz
Paul Searight
Anna Fox
The Echo of Things by Christopher Wright
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“When you’re there, there’s an ambivalence, an uncertainty. What carries you is a sort of youthful momentum and a sort of psychological need to make work in this set of circumstances, where you have an idea about what it is you want to do but you can’t say it until you see it. All those things that all people working on open ended project sexperience. The idea of a vision of it, trying to get something but you don’t know what it is...”