Exhibition

David Stewart - Featherstone Street

21 Oct 2021 – 3 Dec 2021

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
10:00 – 17:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 17:00
Thursday
10:00 – 17:00
Friday
10:00 – 17:00
Saturday
Closed
Sunday
Closed

Special hours

21-Oct-2021
Closed

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Wren London

London
England, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Old Street
  • Old Street
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A new series of pared down portraits, using natural light and large format film, to celebrate the people who have featured throughout David Stewart’s successful 40-year photographic career.

About

Featherstone Street, by acclaimed British photographer David Stewart (b.1958), is a new ongoing series of portraits of the people who have featured throughout Stewart’s successful 40-year photographic career. It also marks the first exhibition at East London gallery, Wren London since the Covid-19 pandemic started in March 2020.

Stewart, who in 2015 won London’s prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, was inspired by his studio becoming flooded by natural daylight due to the demolition of a building opposite at the end of 2019. This occurence temporarily transformed how he was able to work in the space. Using only the natural light and a large format camera shooting on 8x10 lm, he started to photograph formally posed portraits of some of the people who had been involved in his work in a number of different ways over the past ve decades.

Included in the 25 portraits is the person who in 1984 gave him his first commission as a photographer in his own right; various assistants; his printer; and the designers of his books. At no point though does Stewart reveal his relationship to each portrait, it is left to the viewer to make up their own stories. By not revealing who the sitters are, but symbolically flagging their importance by photographing them so formally, Stewart elevates them to a near celebrity status. It is no coincidence that the poses and style bring to mind the mid 20th century work of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn and their portraits of some of the most famous and iconic people of the day. While Stewart does not seek to directly emulate them there is no doubt that this is a contemporary take on Avedon and Penn’s style, albeit a playful one, by documenting relative unknowns but whose significance has been of great consequence to Stewart personally.

For someone who is known for his intricately staged imagery, these portraits appear, at least initially, to be incredibly pared back. Stewart’s only request of the sitters was that they dress as if they were attending a private view. They were posed within minimal sets in whichever part of the studio Stewart felt the light worked best for the portrait, sometimes turning the sitter more towards it or in some cases allowing the light in from the side. They always remain the focal point. Yet there are subtle pointers that reflect Stewart’s relationship with them and his insider knowledge of their roles and characters, that slowly become apparent on closer viewing.

This initial stage of Featherstone Street progressed throughout the periods of UK lock- down until, in the Autumn of 2020, the building opposite started to rise again, gradually taking back the natural light and so making the exposure Stewart required for the large format 8x10 film too long to freeze his subjects. The first phase of the series features 25 portraits. Alongside the exhibition at Wren London, it is published as a book designed by Browns Editions, the designers of which Stewart has also photographed and featured here.

Creating work in a more traditional method that is fast being overlooked and ultimately lost in favour of the digital, David Stewart’s large format photographs can be considered a reaction against the ubiquity in photography heralded by the rise of social me- dia and the notion of the universal photographer. Previously as a photographer, Stewart appears a few steps removed from his subjects, both empathising with but also at times gently mocking them, and yet here in this series Stewart uses his photography as an act of celebration of those who helped make it all possible.

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David Stewart

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