All images ©Graeme Vaughan
I was introduced to Graeme Vaughan when he was down in London for Seba´s private view at HOST shortly after finishing his Fd. a in Contemporary Photography from Mid Cheshire College. We got talking and he kindly showed me his little gem of a project, Warsaw - a notebook, an ongoing series about spaces within the Polish city of which he says:
"Without reference to maps, or books – people in cities become my tour guides to unfamiliar places. The work is made by following strangers as they go about their everyday lives. No-one is followed for long, not long enough for me to become concerned with them as an individual. They act as a set of city dwellers and users who define their city and show it to me. In this work we are taken away from usual tourist routes, and sites, we are led off the surface of tourist maps and guides. In the modern spectacle of the city, this notebook is a product of observations."
Vaughan studied a B.Sc. Applied Psychology / Sociology between 1988-1992 and then completed an M.A. Social Work Practice in 1994 before finally turning to photography.
He first worked as a research assistant for the offender profiling research unit. Exploring relationship between environments and behaviour. As a Probation Officer, he says he took up photography as way of exploring places. During recent photography education, he has developed a community arts practice and this current work on city spaces.
These include The Dwellings, an Arts Council funded project exploring Victoria Square in Manchester, the oldest municipal housing scheme in the UK and Identity, for which he worked with Manchester City Council Adult Social Care users, exploring their lives and places that mean most to them.
