We’re a practice focussed on people and how communities influence the design of buildings and spaces. We feel it’s important to involve people in the whole design process so our approach is collaborative, focussed on creating communities and working with existing ones. Perhaps it is for that reason we are rather taken with Birmingham’s People, an exhibition by Birmingham Photospace.
This is the third exhibition we have had at 3 Mary Street and it’s not our usual style, but as soon as Matt and Emma from Birmingham Photospace started to hang the portraits on the walls of our office, we realised that this one was a bit special.
A statement from Birmingham Photospace reads:
Birmingham Photospace ran Birmingham’s People at Birmingham’s Artsfest Festival on 13th and 14th September 2009.
Inspired by Richard Avedon’s The Family and Nadav Kandar’s Obama’s People, we wanted to take a look at Birmingham’s people and document what we saw.
We created a small portrait studio in Victoria Square and invited the public to have their portraits taken by our photographers Matt Murtagh and Jennifer Peel.
We deliberately approached the project with no preconceptions. We did not pick and choose the participants and we pledged to exhibit an image of everyone brave enough to come in front of the camera.
Birmingham Photospace is a voluntary group dedicated to establishing a permanent space for photography in the City. Birmingham is the second city in the UK with a population of a million people yet it has no dedicated public gallery for photography.
The Photospace, when established, will build on and support the huge interest in photography in the city, showcase Birmingham’s magnificent photography collections (over three million items currently in storage) and fill a gap in Birmingham’s visual arts facilities. For more information, take a look at their website.
The exhibition will be open to the public during office hours (Monday – Friday, 9.00 – 5.00pm) from now until 19th June 2010. If you would like to come and take a look, as we are a working office, we would prefer you to call or email us first to make an appointment. Our contact details can be found here.