Tom Pope is a British photographer born in 1986. He lives and works in London. Pope is the 2015 Photographer in Residence at the Jersey Photo Archives. Last Tuesday we worked with Pope alongside the Jersey Archisle where we did a few workshops to develop our understanding of Performance Photography. Pope is a performance photographer who usually goes on impulse and finds objects when he goes to where he is going to perform.
Pope’s performances are all recorded where he will find an image within each film. Often Pope’s spectators are those who happen to be on the scene at the time as he doesn’t pre-plan or tell anyone where he is going to be in a place.
So It Goes Project:
http://www.tompope.co.uk/soitgoes.html
So It Goes project interview:
The So It Goes project is filled with many different concepts that Pope has managed to create and are displayed on his blog which is linked above. The story of the Grandfather clock has a deeper meaning of living a life without time, which explains destroying the clock and carrying it around in a hearse. I like the idea of this project as in many ways people of our generation would be lost without time. They wouldn’t be able to do the usual things that we are expected to do, such as getting to work and school on time. What if time didn’t exist? What if we didn’t have to live in a world were time was the most important aspect and that we wouldn’t have to worry constantly about not having enough of it.
Another great project of Pope’s is the Fountain Bike. Here Pope made a bike with a mannequin hand holding up a hose pipe which was filtered from the rain water at the side of a road in the UK. Here Pope simply cycled on the spot in the rain and whoever was walking past was his audience and spectators.
I like the vibrant colour of his yellow rain coat and the bright colours on the bike which make it stand out, as well as the obvious that water is shooting off the front of the bike through a hose pipe which is being held up by a mannequin hand and the water being produced from the rain water on the side of a road. This film still show many spectators of Pope’s performance. The first is the woman walking past on the street, moving to the side to avoid getting more wet from the water coming off the bike. The other spectators are the children on the bus who are looks at Pope in an entertained/confused way. I like that Pope will just go out and create something completely random to make an impact and to perform for the people who happen to be there at that time.
On Wednesday 17th the photography group are going to St Malo for the day along with Tom Pope and the Archisle people to show our skills in the art of performance photography. I am excited to see how this turns out and if we manage to come up with visually interesting pieces.