James Dodd
is the kind of photojournalist every city needs, focusing on the people that
make up the life of the city and portraying them in their everyday lives. James
believes that there is an interesting and important story right on his
doorstep. Instead of following the crowd and chasing the sensational or the
shocking, James is determined to tell the real stories about real life in the
city in which he lives.
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| Olympic Dreams Project © James Dodd |
James’s Olympic Dreams project was the first of
these stories. Inspired
by a quote from David Beckham, the project explores the physical and mental
pressures placed on children competing for the Olympics.
“David
Beckham said he was so good at free kicks because he dreamt about doing them.
This repetition meant that he became so comfortable doing them that is was just
like an everyday activity,” said James, Sheffield based photographer and
founder of Statement
Images.
“These
kids were obviously doing the same thing, going through the same routines,
doing a dive twenty times over. I tried to convey the emotions that the kids
were going through without showing the actual emotions, but showing images of
them in this dream-like state.”
Olympic
Dreams also questions the role of children in such high-pressure roles in our
society. “I wanted to create really strong images which people could remember,”
said James. He conveys the children in uncomfortable positions, isolated from
everything else, whilst their bodies are tense in mid dive or grasping at the
water as they swim towards the surface.
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| Olympic Dreams project © James Dodd |
Neither
photojournalism nor art, James said that people struggled to pigeonhole the
project. Yet he has gained coverage from publications such as the Guardian, the
BBC, Burn Magazine and Newsweek Japan. He also exhibited the project at Bank
Street Arts in Sheffield in 2010.
James
now has plans to create a photo documentary of life behind the scenes during
the Olympics. Following the children who don’t get into the Olympic teams or
the younger children who continue training whilst watching their older
colleagues compete. James believes that there will be plenty of coverage of the
Olympic teams but “these are the stories that need to be told.”
A
qualified photojournalist, James believes in the hyper local and the importance
of the everyday stories that are never told. “The Olympic Dreams project was
the start of this idea that stories exist locally which can have national and
international significance,” said James.
From the extremes to the
everyday
After
working as a freelance journalist and experiencing the limitations of news
journalism, James began to question the mindset of his vocation. He had
reservations about the chase for images of extreme sadness and destruction
which newspapers often request. He questioned the virtues of chasing the image
that would give him a career-break and the eagerness of his colleagues to
travel to war torn countries or places of disaster to cover these ‘extremes’.
“I thought, is that really what I want to be involved in? I’m more interested
in the subjects within the world where I live, rather than chasing images
around the world.”
James
decided that he wanted the time and space to work on stories which were
important and interesting without the restrictions and limitations of news. So
he sought advice from other photographers like Simon Roberts,
an award-winning photographer who studied Human Geography at Sheffield
University. Simon, who was also
the official Election artist in 2010, has become a
mentor for James and has helped him to pursue his dreams.
This
idea of exchanging ideas and expertise informed the creation of Statement
Images, a collective of photographers from around the world. The
collective acts as a support network and a forum for sharing ideas and
projects. “We’ve all got similar goals and to some extent it is easier to pull
together and to become known under one name.” James’s Olympic Dreams project
led to the collective gaining a commission from Channel 4. “We’ve all got
different sets of skills and we can pitch for each other,” said James.
An alternative platform- slow
journalism
James
is also co-editor of Street Reverb Magazine, a website dedicated
to promoting, publishing and discussing contemporary street photography. James
believes that the agenda-focused media has driven photojournalists to look for
alternative platforms like Street Reverb and Statement
Images as a means of publishing.
The
inspiration to create such platforms has come from photographer Rob Hornstra
and his Sochi
Project. In 2014, the Olympic Games will take place in Sochi,
Russia. Sochi is a largely impoverished region, next to the conflict zone
Abkhazia. Rob Hornstra and filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen are spending the next
five years documenting the extreme makeover of the region and how Sochi’s
‘economic crises is glossed over as much as possible’.
James
marvels at how Rob and Arnold have created their own platform for their
stories, without going through the standard publishing routes. He said that by
creating their own platform they have ensured a level of control which means
they do not have to follow the media’s agenda. “They cover stories that the
newspapers aren’t interested in and concentrate on the daily life in the area,”
said James.
One
of their stories is about the Sochi singers and how in the Sochi culture the
same traditional songs are sung in the same settings in every town in the
region. James values the everyday nature of these stories, “It’s a very simple
sharing of this way of life. It is not an ‘extreme’ of life but it is still
intriguing.”
Sunday Morning Sales
James
is currently working on his own project of similar simplicity and everyday
nature. His Sunday Morning Sales project documents car
boot sales across the country. James simply captures the people and their
objects, portraying the tranquil nature of a car boot sale; a man relaxing in a
chair in the middle of a field, a woman standing behind her table of trinkets
staring into the sky and categories of books, clothes or toys neatly laid out
for someone else to treasure.
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| Sunday Morning Sales project © James Dodd |
James
believes that each stall is a portrait of the sellers, “a piece of themselves
spread out right there on decorating tables and on the floor for all to see and
buy.”
Staying
true to the ideas of alternative platforms, James plans to exhibit this work
‘in the context it was created in’. He is buying picture frames from the car
boot sales in which he will place the photographs to exhibit at the car boot
sales. He aims to use the work to approach new audiences who might not normally
step into a gallery and who aren’t going with the purpose of seeing art
“They
will also have an interest in the subject because they are part of it, there
are few places you can exhibit where you know that 300 odd people will be
interested in the subject,” mused James.
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| Sunday Morning Sales project © James Dodd |
Sheffield as a subject
Taking
the idea of hyper local to its extreme, James has been working on Sheffield as
a project for the last five months. “I want to find out more about the city
which is the single geographical location that has the most connection to me,
but I don’t feel this same connection to it,” said James.
He
is exploring the idea of the city having seven hills and the fact there are
more trees per person than any other city in Europe. James is also interested
in where Sheffield’s industry has gone and what has replaced it. “I want to
explore whether Sheffield’s identity has changed with its industry.”
Now
that he has bought a house in Sheffield, James feels more of a need to explore
the city, “I have lived here for 27 years and yet there are still areas I have
never been to. I feel like I have explored other cities more as a photographer
where as I’ve neglected my own.”
James
is currently exploring Sheffield’s past through his Dead
Photographers project. Using his father's removals company,
James is collecting the unwanted items discarded during house clearances of the
deceased. He has found whole photography archives of once keen photographers.
James is using this collection to explore the relationship between photography
and time, and how people’s attitudes towards photographs have changed.
With
each new project James maintains a determination to simply document the everyday
lives of people around him, exploring the intriguing stories of the regular
person, the ‘stories that need to be told’.
A
review by No Culture Icons, a collective of photographers and artists, sums up James’s style perfectly; “The images are
without mystery or questioning, but instead revel in the few times in which
there are no great unknowns to be fought against: here are the people, and this
is what they do, what they buy and sell, what they are and what they want to
be.”
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| Sunday Morning Sales project © James Dodd |
