David Moore
UK
Pictures from the Real World
Pictures from the Real World
David Moore’s Pictures from the Real World was the fore runner of much activity that followed in British photographic history, it’s first showing was in 1988 in a special edition of Creative Camera selected by Martin Parr. The series itself is a collection of colour documentary photographs of different families on a council estate in Moore’s home city of Derby, UK, made between 1987 and 1988.
Revisiting the work has allowed the photographer to identify and develop other ways of seeing, evident in the original contact sheets, but not brought to any outcome at the time. The revisionist activity described is supported by an acknowledgment of learning and development as a practitioner in the intervening years.
Underpinning this are the connecting themes; The Document itself as a representational tool and the relational dynamics between photographer and subject including issues of proximity and access. One might argue that the subsistence level living encountered, connects the content of the work to current times.
Dewi Lewis and ‘Here’ publications published a limited edition book for these 18 photographs with an essay from David Chandler ‘Pictures from the Real World’, retains a visceral energy 25 years after the event and documents a particular time in British social and photographic history.
David Moore
David Moore is a photographer and educator based in London, he has published several books and exhibited widely. David graduated from West Surrey College of Art and Design in 1988 and his first solo exhibition was in 1994, showing The Velvet Arena at The Photographers’ Gallery, also published by Velvet Press in that year.
Recent practice has developed into series of interrelated observations of institutional settings and State environments, this work is ongoing and can be seen in The Last Things [Dewi Lewis Publications, 2008] where he documented a never before photographed, live, state environment in central London.
David Moore is currently senior lecturer on the MA Photography course at Central Saint Martins, London.
