Instagram Takeover: Freddy Griffiths

We welcome Freddy Griffiths to our Instagram takeover this week. Freddy is our current artist in residence for the Photoworks and Ampersand Residency 2020. He'll spend the week sharing his working process and images from his personal archive.

Griffiths’s photographic practice is centred around the ongoing cultivation of a personal archive, compromised of both his own photographs and other diverse found imagery. The primary function of this archive is to explore new narrative scenarios for the viewing of physical photographs. Recently this has led to a number of site specific architectural installations, utilising purpose made tables, containers and lighting.

 

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@freddy.griffiths here for my @photoworks_uk takeover. I have a number of long trestle tables set up in my studio at the moment. On the tables I usually lay out a selection of photographs, then leave it unaltered for a few weeks and finally photograph the layout. I find its good to live with the edit for a time, before coming back to it. These images are from the studio this morning. #photoworks_uk #freddygriffiths #instagramtakeover

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on May 2, 2020 at 5:19am PDT

 

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@freddy.griffiths here for my @photoworks_uk takeover. Once I have added a photograph to my archive I may at a future point decide to physically change it with paint or other substances. These altered images may then be re-photographed or merely placed back into the archive. This process can be successful, or I can easily ruin a found photograph that I’ve become quite attached to. The outcome is an exercise in chance to a certain extent. I’m showing you both the front and back of each photograph. Sometimes the reverse is the most interesting part. – Images: 2020,0331,DYS,0106 – recto + verso, 2020,0331,DYS,0119 recto + verso #photoworks_uk #freddygriffiths #instagramtakeover

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Apr 29, 2020 at 2:10am PDT

His interests in this area have been led by a spatial concept of photographic knowledge, using fictionalised and misleading elements to decide on edits for exhibition. Griffiths is exploring chance outcomes through audience participation as a means of furthering future iterations of the archive.

 

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Good morning @freddy.griffiths here for my @photoworks_uk takeover. When I decided to establish an archive as a means of categorizing my own photographs, I moved away from producing defined bodies of work. I merged all my previous distinct projects into one amorphous collection, together with found images and categorised everything only by date, place of origin and a specific accession number. A primary motivation for doing this was to break the connection between each photograph and the circumstances of its inception. By this I specifically mean what the photograph references in reality and the methodology by which it was made. I have many types of photograph in my archive. The cyanotype and tintype pictured are two of the oldest examples. – Images: 2020,0225,DYS and 2016,0423,DYS #photoworks_uk #freddygriffiths #instagramtakeover

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Apr 28, 2020 at 1:45am PDT

 

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@freddy.griffiths here for my @photoworks_uk takeover. More painted photographs from my archive. I mostly buy vernacular ‘found’ photographs from a variety of sources, it’s rare that I’m lucky and simply come across what I’m looking for discarded. Although we tend to think of the printed image as ubiquitous and abundant, I prefer to collect specific types of colour photography and it’s often pretty hard to find what I want. I’d say it’s getting more difficult; people are asking for more money than they did ten years ago. – Images: 2020,0331,DYS,0073 – recto + verso, 2020,0331,DYS,0074 – recto + verso

A post shared by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on Apr 29, 2020 at 8:52am PDT

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