Tell us about where you grow up. What kind of place it was? How did photography start?
Alec Currie (AC): I was born in Salford, Manchester and lived there for the first ten years of my life before moving to Haworth, then Leeds and eventually Hebden Bridge when I was 16. Salford was a very working-class northern industrial city and this informed my early childhood and had a profound outlook on my early life. I was then brought up in care across the Pennines in Leeds, Yorkshire. Leeds in the 1980s was also a northern industrial city, and even though both Leeds and Salford were forged in the peak of the industrial revolution, Leeds was more of the trading city with its roots based on clothing and the rag trade. Leeds had a thriving alternative and gay scene, but could also be a very dark place beset with drug problems and crime. The local council also has a long history of pulling down any buildings of note to often be replaced either with a car park or bland office buildings. This also extends to all the brutalist buildings that Leeds used to have that have now all but disappeared. This has and continues to have an impact on how I respond to and think about the built environment.
© Alex Currie from the series 'Reduntant Ideals', International Pool, Leeds, 2009
© Alex Currie from the series 'Reduntant Ideals', Preston Bus Station, Lancashire, 2009
© Alex Currie from the series 'Reduntant Ideals', Wonky Goalposts, Red Road, Glasgow, 2010
I was given a camera at a very early age but only really started photographing seriously in my late teens early twenties. What became apparent very quickly was that I had an aversion to photographing people and was more interested in architecture and the built environment, something that has carried through into my work during and beyond university.
What about your educational background? How do you relate to this? Any takeaways? Any meaningful courses? Any professor or teacher you remember well?
AC: My current photographic practice really started to formulate at Brighton University. I had already applied off my own back with no formal training and didn’t get accepted to the course. Because of this, I did a photography course every Saturday for six months, which enabled me to produce a portfolio of work. I was then accepted on to the Photography course at Brighton University in 2004. The course leader at the time was Dr. Christopher Stewart, whose critical theory on photography had a profound impact on my practice and outlook. Aaron Schuman was also pivotal to shaping my thoughts and ideas, and Mark Power had a profound impact on my photographic working methods and aesthetics, and it is because of him that I still use a large format camera to this day.
© Alex Currie from the series 'Infrastructure of Artifice', Untitled #15
© Alex Currie from the series 'Infrastructure of Artifice', Untitled #19
What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking? How is the language evolving and impacting the daily life of people and communities in your opinion?
AC: Looking at photography in the era of digital and social networking, I think it has done a lot to democratise photography, which is no bad thing. However, the downside of this is that now ‘everybody’ is a photographer and the internet is now deluged with images. In a lot of ways, this makes it more difficult to stand out above all the ‘noise’, but at the same time, it has given me an impetus to improve my photographic practice and learn to either ignore the ‘noise’ or to actually use social networking and the internet to share and publicise my work. Instagram is a case in point, and I have always been fairly skeptical of it, especially with its overuse of filters, but I have noticed in the past few years that more and more photographers are actually using this platform to their benefit. I reluctantly set up a ‘professional’ Instagram account last year and off the back of that alone, I was offered three exhibitions, one of which one was at Side Gallery in Newcastle with photographers including Vanessa Winship, John Davies, Peter Bialobrzeski, Martin Parr, Tish Murtha, Simon Roberts, Chris Killip, Tom Wood, Daniel Meadows, Bill Brandt, Simon Norfolk, Dean Chapman, John Kippin, Sirkka-Liisa Kontinnen and Henri Cartier-Bresson to name but a few.
© Alex Currie from the series 'Reduntant Ideals', Parkhill Flats, Sheffield, 2009
About your work now. How would you introduce yourself as an author or described your personal methodology? Your visual exploration...
AC: I’ve always been drawn to the overlooked and the banal, whether this be housing, industrial or the spaces that we live in and inhabit. Without photographing people, my interest is in societal frameworks and infrastructure and how this informs our everyday living. This could mean that I photograph cities, ports, housing or more traditional landscapes, with a view to reflecting upon the impact of these places on the human psyche.
Can you introduce to the series 'Degeneration' that was selected for Urbanautica Institute Awards 2019? What drove your interest in this project? How you developed it?
AC: I developed the project ‘Degeneration’ with the Human Endeavour Collective. Conceived and executed as a collaborative body of work, I personally have long had an interest in social housing and the implications of this and government policy has had on some of the poorest in society. We initially looked at the regeneration of these housing estates, but quickly realised that it became far more interesting and poignant to document and reflect upon the demise of social housing in the UK. Hence the title ‘Degeneration’. The project was researched over a number of years and we went to great efforts to involve local community leaders and residents. Because of the political nature of the project a lot of research was also done into the sociological impacts of different government policies on social housing, mainly focusing on the Right To Buy policy that enabled working-class residents to buy their own homes. This arguably started the terminal decline of social housing in the UK as Margaret Thatcher ring-fenced any money from the sale of housing with the proviso that it could not be used to build new houses. This has had a devastating impact on some of the poorest in society leaving the UK with a chronic housing crisis in the 21st century. We knew it would be difficult to photograph the whole UK so we chose the major metropolitan conurbations including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Sheffield, Salford, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth, and London. We also involved researchers and writers on the politics and philosophy of social housing including Richard Healey and Lynsey Hanley.
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Ibrox, Glasgow, 2010
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Bucksburn Road, Glasgow, 2010
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Brig Bar, Red Road Flats, Glasgow, 2010
Tell us a bit of the 'Human Endeavour' experience...
AC: We started Human Endeavour Collective in 2008 as a response to doing group shows with a variety of different photographers with a very different outlook critically and aesthetically. Human Endeavour gave us the opportunity to be able to focus on collective ideas and work collaboratively in a way that wouldn’t have happened previously. It came to a natural conclusion in 2013 and we have all continued our practice separately. Unfortunately, this was in large part due to an inability to garner funding for our work due to to the governmental cuts driven by austerity in the UK.
Cities are growing. Urbanism is expanding. More and more people are moving away from their lands to live in huge artificial settlements often polluted. Beyond weak attempts to bring nature back into towns what is the role of architecture?
AC: I think the simple answer to this is good architecture and good town planning and good use of public space incorporated into this. Too often, especially with such a high premium on land, the onus has been put on maximising profit and making the best use of space to build either offices or luxury flats, with no thought given to the social responsibilities of building cohesive communities. Le Corbusier was a very good example of how to build socially responsible buildings that were actually designed for living. Much of Le Corbusier’s work has been copied aesthetically but with no thought given to the philosophical or sociological thinking that often went into his ideas.
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Chimney Breasts, Salford, 2010
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Garages, Salford, 2010
© Alex Currie from the series 'Degeneration', Runswick Place, Holbeck, 2009
In your statement we read «At its height in the 50’s Social Housing was unquestionably a central pillar of Britain’s regeneration following the devastation of the Second World War». Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 marked a real issue of the housing estate in Britain, and for a while activated political criticism and debate. How do you relate to it...
AC: I live in social housing myself so I was very moved emotionally by what happened. I visited Grenfell Tower three days after the fire to talk to people on the ground and to offer my support. When we did ‘Degeneration’ in 2010 social housing in the UK was not on the agenda and was in terminal decline. I think it’s great that the issue is now being taken seriously as a matter of urgent need, however, wish it hadn’t taken something so devastatingly tragic to focus the minds of politicians.
Three books that you recommend in relation to the project 'Degeneration' or your photography or your interest in general.
Sleeping By The Mississippi by Alec Soth. Unconscious Places by Thomas Struth. The British Landscape by John Davies.
© John Davies, New Street Station, Birmingham 2000
© Alex Currie from the series 'Nonscapes', Untitled #4
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
AC: I haven’t been to that many shows in the past year but I would have to say Andreas Gursky at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2018. Although I am not a big fan of his more recent work he had a pivotal effect on my thinking and practice. Gursky was a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, along with Thomas Struth. The Becher’s developed a conceptual mode of photography called Typologies. This method of photography was heavily conceptual and used repeated imagery of similar objects, such as water towers or blast furnaces, to give a completely objective view of the subject shown in the image. Andreas Gursky expanded on this methodology to reflect upon the infrastructure of modern society and the impacts of globalisation. I use this method of photography to enable the viewer to look at the subjects that I choose in an objective manner. This will involve me using similar composition techniques with different images and also using flat lighting to put the emphasis on the subject and the architecture. Also the exhibition About The North: Imagined Dialogues in 2018. This was the group exhibition at Side Gallery that I was part of and was extremely inspiring just because of the breadth of work that was shown.
Installation view 'About The North: Imagined Dialogues', Side Gallery, 2018
What are you up to?
AC: For the past seven years I have been photographing the Outer Hebrides in Scotland and will be moving there from Brighton for six months before relocating to Berlin and continuing my artistic practice there. I continue to photograph as much as I can, although that is often dependant on my ability to travel and also funding. This is why I have decided to relocate to the Outer Hebrides to embed myself within the community and to really get a feel for the people and community and to reflect upon the work I have produced there over the past seven years and bring the project to, what I hope, is a satisfactory conclusion.
---
share this page