WE ENGLISH

You could say that my upbringing was quintessentially English: modest, conventional, not in the least exotic. I was born in Croydon, South London, in 1974. My mother is a Northerner, hailing from Cumbria, who met my London-born father when they were both working in the capital. My formative years were spent in the provincial town of Oxted, in Surrey’s commuter belt, where I attended the local comprehensive, played on my Raleigh Grifter bicycle and took photographs with my Canon AE1 camera, given to me for Christmas when I was 14. Holidays were spent walking in the Lake District (often in the rain) or visiting my grandparents in Angmering, a retirement town on the South Coast.

These memories of my youth are unremarkable. Yet they resemble those of thousands of other English men and women and spark off a host of associations and images. It is these recollections that form part of the inspiration for this project, We English.

My thoughts turned to my own homeland after spending two years producing a book about Russia and Russian identity (Motherland, published by Chris Boot Ltd), which led me to think in turn about Englishness and its complex ambiguities and connotations.

We English is a photographic journal of life in England in 2008, specifically documenting landscapes where groups of people congregate for a common purpose and shared experience. It’s about what people do in their spare time, their leisure pursuits and pastimes and how people derive meaning and identity from these activities. It’s also about people’s relationship with their environment, whether their immediate surroundings are urban, rural or anything in between. There is no such thing as a definitive set of images that encapsulate Englishness. We English is about social landscapes but it is not about social or political analysis. It does not seek to define but simply to represent.

Logistically, the project will take the form of a journey around England where I will be joined by my wife and daughter. In addition to my own research, I am asking visitors to this website to post Your Ideas about events and places that I could photograph and to communicate with me and others on the Blog. In this way, We English will become a collaborative endeavour, reflecting the diverse experiences and insights of its subject.

For a more detailed proposal, please download a pdf here

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to We-English’s Newsletter

Name:

Email:

YOUR IDEAS

An important element to the success of We English is an active engagement with you, the English public. So post details on the Your Ideas page regarding events, pastimes or festivals happening in your locale, which you’re happy for me to attend and photograph.

The first 150 people to submit an appropriate idea will receive a limited edition print from We English (provided a postal address is supplied).

If you would like to submit your idea privately, then please send an email to info@we-english.co.uk