The Lowry

Centre Stage is a new commission and exhibition from The Lowry, Salford.

Working in and around Salford and Manchester has been such a fantastic experience. People have been incredibly friendly and open to me photographing them, and I’ve been privileged to meet some amazing people.

The commission brief was to capture the audience of The Lowry and celebrate them – without the audience, the centre would not of course exist.

The Lowry is pretty vast – it comprises theatre spaces, gallery spaces, rehearsal studios, restaurants, cafes and bars.

I live in London and find visiting the theatre prohibitively expensive – unless of course you plan ahead, which I’ve never been great at. I was amazed at the natural diversity of The Lowry audience, the prices of the tickets are so much lower and they work hard there to provide particularly cheap tickets for people with the local postcode. It means that their programme is much more accessible, and it really makes a difference.

I usually photograph people in their home environment, and usually my subjects will have something in common – but this seemed very different – I felt that photographing people in my usual style would not create the sense of drama, passion and engagement that the subjects described feeling when visit The Lowry. For this reason I began experimenting with their lighting and settled on spotlighting the subjects, within their own homes, and still allowing enough light to show their surroundings and therefore to potentially give more clues to someone’s life and lifestyle.

This was exhibited at The Lowry from January to May 2013.