Max Miechowski

0:05[Applause]

0:14okay hello hello it is thank you very much for the warm welcome and for the introduction Matt as you said my name is Max moshevsky and I like taking photographs so I was hoping to use this as an opportunity to show you some of those if you'll allow it seems that I kind of focus on our community and urban culture and sorry should have gone into that a minute ago community an urban culture and I'm particularly interested in how these things influence our individual sense of identity both on a local and a global scale how I try and address this is essentially by making photographs of the people and places that are directly around me so rather than looking further afield to exotic places in the world I try and make work about the communities in the places like I said there are right in front of me how I tend to do this is essentially by making portraits which as I get into the main part of the presentation you'll see is a very prominent part of my work.

1:20So I just wanted to start by giving you a little bit of the flavor of my images and a little bit more about me.

1:27So I'm originally from Lincoln in the East Midlands moshevsky is a classic linkage you name someone from Lincoln yeah yeah. I was not expecting that no one's ever from Lincoln yeah I'm originally from Lincoln but now living in London where the majority of my projects and my work is is made actually used to be a musician so throughout my teenage years and my early 20s I was working as a musician and as a music teacher. And it was only when I was around the age of 25 that I actually discovered photography and really fell deeply in love with it and of I might change my mind but right.

2:12Now I feel like I'm dedicating my life to it you know it's very serious and what I wanted to do today was basically go through a selection of personal projects starting with a very early one that I haven't shown for a very long time with a more recent project that I completely lost some of the budget spark project that Matt mentioned and a project in between that hopefully shows how these two projects link on from each other.

2:38So the first project is called Cemetery Road this was an early project when I was first I now it was actually in 2015-2016 so I'd only been photographing maybe for a year or so or owned a camera for a year or so and it was it the reason why I wanted to show this today was that it just gave me a very strong sense of direction as a photographer and showed me what I wanted to kind of continue pursuing in the world of making images so I made these images whilst I was living on Cemetery Road which is in Beeston in Leeds anyone know of beastin the same person from Lincoln actually knows the street or a crazy coincidence yeah and it was a very simple idea. And it was basically just photographs of my neighbors so when I moved to Cemetery Road I kind of took it upon myself to consciously start getting to know the people that were living around me.

4:04And this was through an active effort of essentially knocking on people's doors and introducing myself as someone who just moved to the area and basically saying that you know I live close by and if they ever want to talk I'm here I'm here to talk and to be friends you know and to be good wholesome neighbors and this. Actually ended up being really productive and I got to know a lot of people living on the street and it was actually a real great time and over a long period of time or a longer period of time I started to make portraits of them inside their homes and this was a great way for me to essentially engage with the local community and hopefully to promote a sense of I suppose unity within the street you know it was a really fun process and I was regularly invited in being provided with pretty much an endless stream of cups of tea and also attended a few barbecues and some pre drink sessions and yeah it all got kind of a little crazy but it was a great it was a great experience and I turned these images into a small book and along with a single print for each person took the book with the print just before I moved away. And it was a really rewarding experience I think and the people that are photographing and my neighbors I think really enjoyed the process and it gave them a strong sense of community as well so like I said this is some really early work that I haven't shown for ages and you'll see why because I think just visually it doesn't really fit in with what I'm doing now.

5:40But I wanted to show it just because it gave me a very strong sense of direction so after leaving cemetery Road and having provided my neighbors with this book and the print about their Street I had an opportunity to move to London. So I did so I live here. Now.

5:57That's what's going on.

6:00And this was about two and a half years ago. I was just in the wake of the brexit referendum and it felt particularly kind of saw and the time which I realize it still does and it just felt like a very interesting time to kind of move to London and and to get a little bit of a sense of the atmosphere I knew that moving here I wanted to make work that gave me an opportunity to engage with my community again but I wanted to do it in a little bit of a different way I didn't want to just photograph the people that lived on my street I wanted to look at a little bit of a wider area around me and to slowly get to know different people that essentially make up that area and when I moved here I moved to southeast London.

6:48So I moved to New Cross anyone from the across yeah more people okay not just the one person from Lincoln and Leeds and yeah.

6:59So I decided to make work essentially about South East London as kind of a focused area and how I decided to do this was basically just by walking around endlessly really and just going down every little side street and every little back alley and every park and whatever I could kind of think of and took my camera with me and essentially started making portraits mainly of the people that I met through that process and for whatever reason particularly resonated with me so obviously it's quite a different style visually to the cemetery road work.

8:02But I felt like it was starting to go in a more sensitive direction that I very much approve dove and so making this work. Basically gave me an opportunity to explore this particular area of the city but I had moved to you that was now my new home and to slowly through the process start to understand my place within it and how I fit into that local community naturally by focusing on portraiture it gave me an opportunity to meet lots of different people living around me and through conversations and through interactions with these people learning about their experience of of the city of this place that I just moved to I find the process of walking and meeting people and taking portraits and essentially doing street photography I particularly meditative experience and it's something that I still see is a very important part of my practice now is to yeah basically like just put your camera in your bag and pack some peanut butter sandwiches and just walk around all day and just take pictures it's kind of that simple and it's kind of relaxing and quite therapeutic and it's often quite surprising who you meet and the types of stories that you can kind of gather through that process although I like these images and yeah I still like these images it didn't feel very focused as a body of work which was quite frustrating to me I felt that South East London was kind of too wide an area to focus on and what I liked about the cemetry Road project is it was it was very focused it was looking at a particular street in a particular area that I was obviously connected to you know I lived on that Street but eventually through walking around I discovered Burgess Park does anyone know Burgess Park yeah some big fans of okay. So living in New Cross I was kind of I was right at the bottom of Old Kent Road so I was very close to the park and it was last summer in the summer of 2018 that will all remember forever because it was so glorious and dreamy I basically walked into the park trying to take a little bit of a break from walking around and taking pictures and really just kind of instantly fell in love with it.

10:28And I'd never been there before and anyone who knows he's been there kind of in the summer around the barbecues it really is like quite a magical place the parks it's central to for kind of five different little areas so it sits next to Peckham and Camberwell and Woolworth and Bermondsey and it kind of this is this kind of central area that really seems to bring all of those communities together. So it seemed like a really good place to focus my attention and to make some work here are some of those images when I first discovered the park it was there was a huge birthday party happening around the barbecues with mariachi bands and dancing and everyone's eating together and there was loads of sound systems and people were salsa dancing together. And I got like roped into the salsa session I was just like what the hell is going on like this is the park just down the road you know. And it just felt really incredible to see so much life and energy and kind of community spirit happening in your local park when I started to in the park I started to recognize equality to the images that I hadn't seen in my previous work especially with the work at Cemetery Road I felt like they had a dreamy and romantic quality to them and still do that very much kind of fits my ideals about about community and about unity in terms of living together within an urban space I was very fortunate with this project to have received some good press comment with one of the images getting into the National Portrait Gallery last year as part of the National as part the Taylor Weston portrait prize which led onto a solo exhibition at the print space and I did a group show which was part of photo London at the Copeland gallery in Peckham was part of Peckham 24 and I'm also showing the work again at Copeland gallery in a couple of weeks and the reason why I kind of end on that point is is is really not to brag but hopefully just to illustrate the fact that inspiration and great stories and great projects aren't just happening on the other side of the world they're happening on the street that you live on behind number 75 where George lives you know you can go and knock on that door and ask him if he wants a cup of tea and you might find a really amazing portrait it might even be happening as close as your local park [Applause]