Artist in Residence Week 4 - Jon Stamp

In the past week The Old Lookout has played host to Jon Stamp's collection of his great-grandfather's photographs from his time in the navy, titled And What Did We See? The images on display were a mixture of framed reprints; albums of original images and postcards; Jon's great-grandfather's diary from his time at sea and recordings of the extracts form the diary interspersed with sea-songs. The idea behind the exhibition was to bring this very personal piece of family history and present it to the public, demonstrating that although the images were not taken by a professional photographer, rather a passionate amateur, they are still beautiful works of reportage.

After having spent some time in and around the gallery on this beautifully sunny weekend, I managed to hear people's reactions to the exhibition first hand. In the time that I was there, and also from what Jon told me at the end of the week, the reaction to this work was incredibly positive. People seemed genuinely interested in the history, and pleased that such an archive had been saved and treasured. Jon was brilliant at engaging the visitors as soon as they entered, introducing them to the exhibition and demonstrating his passion and knowledge of the work. This really stood out to me here, perhaps because the project is so personal to the artist, but is also easily related to by the public. It seemed that people really connected to the fact that the images were not produced by a professional, earning his money as a photographer, but someone working in the navy. It seemed to provoke the public to tell their own stories about relatives who had served in the army, navy or air force. Jon did mention to me that he had deliberately not used caption labels for the images, so that if people were interested in knowing more about the image they would have to talk to the artist. I felt this really created a rapport and showed how their stories and feedback was not only valuable to Jon's confidence in the work but can enrich its history with other people's input and memories. From what I observed the visitors were made to feel comfortable in the space and with the images.

Of course the issue with reflective frames was highlighted by one visitor, but Jon didn't seem to have a problem with it. He did note that some people mainly came up to the gallery because they wanted to know about the building, which was taken on board and he actually made a little information sheet that people could take away with them. Jon also noted that some people were only really interested in the archive of original content - the diary and photo albums. However, this did still pique interest. Judging by the amount of good feedback in the comments book alone, I would say that this exhibition really did connect with people who came to see it. Particularly with the good weather we had over this week, numbers of visitors particularly on Saturday and Sunday were very good. Fortunately, on these days friends of the artist had come to visit, so Jon could pop off for quick breaks without having to close the gallery. He did note that it would have been of benefit to have a second person there all the time so he didn't have to close at all. Overall, Jon is clearly passionate about both this work and the use of The Old Lookout as a gallery space, saying that he really relished being able to explain and discuss the work and listen to people's reactions and own personal stories relating to the subject matter.