Charlie Kwai

0:14[Applause]

0:18hello everybody good evening so what I'm going to do is I'm going to run through a quick introduction for those who got a free ticket and probably didn't do their research so my name is Charlie qu some of you might have been expecting an Asian man or maybe a sad depressed looking middle-aged gentleman but in fact I'm more unique than that is I am actually from Beal green so grew up around this area which makes me a real East Ender is any any more out there F not so I'm known for taking very close and can candid Street portraits predominantly on the Streets of London.

1:05But in dhl's case that was in Margate my days consist of walking around in circles hours on end in search of interesting people doing obscurely bizarre things and that makes me a street photographer.

1:24But I like to call it some kind of like Freestyle documentary photography so now I believe in getting your money's worth so when I heard that you all paid 122 to be here to listen to me tonight I thought I better make it worth your money so what I'm going to do is take you all into the future and show you a project from Ghana ruin the surprise that won't be served for quite a while yet yeah.

1:52So before Christmas I was in Ghana which is in West Africa for those who don't know their geography but no I wasn't on my own I was with a lovely guy called Chris Lee who's on the left and Paul story here and together we make up a collective called tripod City yeah triod city was a band that we decided to form in Rome 10 years ago but with any good band you need a good band shot so we spent the ENT entire time in Rome making band shots but after realizing none of us could play any instrument we decided to give up on the music careers and focus on photography instead so 9 years later last summer we released our first book titled made in China I've only B four copies so they are for sale so the idea of the collaboration between the three of us is that we tell stories of plac places and events U from the three perspectives of our Styles and so we try and collectively form one story so why Ghana I hear you all thinking well as with China Ghana was a place that we didn't really know much about and what we did know was pretty much based on stereotypes or from what we learned from the media so photography for for us really is just an excuse to go and visit these places and investigate the reality now before anyone thinks that our trip to Ghana was easy let me tell you it definitely wasn't firstly the heat was unbearable 40° walking around in that was suicide which made our window of opportunity extremely small for comparison if we were traing around in London taking pictures would spend between six and and and 8 hours walking around but in Ghana we literally had 2 hours or would die secondly we stuck out like sore thums and for some reason we came we became the center of attention wherever we went and the kids just wouldn't leave us alone so that made it really hard to get those unaware candid portraits without someone frying up a gang sign or pulling off some cheesy ass smile it's just impossible to get what I wanted even the kid was in on it but obviously you just got to get involved sometimes but we really we don't really help ourselves by wearing masching photography vests and using walkie-talkies but the biggest problem that we had in Ghana was that photography was frowned upon by a lot of the population and before we went we honestly thought we could go there and do as we pleased and take pictures how we would in London.

5:07But that definitely was not the case we just get heckled for even just having a camera let alone taking a picture and it did like kick off sometimes and these two are near misses they are swiping at me with their right hand but then. There was this guy I was in the sea taking pictures and then.

5:28I found this lovely gentleman standing going to see looking lost so I took his picture naturally but he kicked off went crazy shouting at me in his native language I didn't know what was going on but thankfully enough to my left there was a family and the father of the family was wearing a Superman t-shirt and he came to my rescue not by calming a situation but by beating him up yeah and the story ends with us being a signed our personal cute little bodyguard but went by the name of Patrick bottom left for those can't see so I think I can safely say that our trip to Ghana wasn't very easy and it was challenging to say the least but in hindsight it was a good thing we didn't really have time to be intimidated by what we were confronted with which forced us to find ways to navigate the culture and find ways to shoot how we wanted to shoot this is the first picture serious picture I'm showing you by the way another way I tackled the situation was to look for certain things that wouldn't get me into as much trouble and these things became their own stories that run alongside the triod city collaboration this one is obviously of merchandise which I found entertaining another one of those series was children or kids and the thing with street photography is that you always need like an objective or something to constantly look for it gives you a reason to be there in the first place and carry on walking around the next Corner and believe you me I've walked for hours in circles days not knowing why I was there or what I was taking pictures of so to have something to look for even if it is kids anything in between that becomes a bonus another thing that we documented together. Actually was various Sports this one's obviously from a rugby game and photographing Sports was offered some much needed like rest bite from the drama of the street and it was an environment of which we could go in and just work freely but yeah without the stresses so I'd love to show you more of these boys but unfortunately we've only got 10 minutes so I'm going to show you one series and that is a series on troos so or or buses to Me and You by the way and troos are the public transport system of Ghana and I believe the wider West African Community and they are absolutely everywhere so no matter where you go in Ghana there'll always be a troo which made it an easiest thing for me to constantly do no matter where we were so these guys hanging out the windows are called the mates or bus conductors and they hang out of the side of Transit vans come buses shouting a destination of which they're heading and the best thing was by the time they realized I actually took their photograph they were halfway down the road so I could get away with quite a bit.

8:41So I began to photograph these Lads pretty much from the first day we arrived in Ghana and the more I did it the more I realized that they actually loved it and a lot of them just turned into that which was a problem any graphic design designers in the house come on it's one for you yeah. So alongside photographing the troo boys I also photographed their signs which they stuck on the back of the troos which were obviously pretty entertaining and very obscure so I did it mainly because they didn't actually talk back.

9:23But yeah they were entertaining but the main reason why was as soon as you pair with a troo mate it be it becomes a kind of running commentary which reflects the sense of humor of these Lads that work in the troos yeah.

9:41So this will eventually be put into a series in sometime in the future Charlie gmail.com if you want a pre-order so in between this those little stories was the main reason why we were there.

9:56So the assignment of trial T my personal goal within the framework of of that collaboration was to capture normality and I know that doesn't sound very glamorous.

10:07But I wanted to capture what was most humanly familiar to me which I could connect with the most so I focus on trying to capture the universal connections that we all share as human beings to try and evoke like a relationship between the audience which are all you and the people in the photographs which are the garans and if there is a connection that exists between you and them then that could have a Ru influence over your opinion of the person or the place that they're from and like my style I get quite close and that's on purpose because I want to force you all to use your Imagination and create your own interpretation of the environment that's around them or circumstances that might have surrounded this event or person in the photograph so if you if you do go to Ghana or if you've been lucky enough to be you know that the Gans are probably the most friendliest welcoming and carefree people on the entire planet so with all what I've said my my hope is that my photographs go some way by giving voice to their positive and funloving attitude towards life now before I go there might be a few of you in the audience that are wondering what I gave back to the guy for taking so much well the short answer is haircuts thank you I'm london.

11:42Journal and [Applause]

11:52Instagram