“Town Hall”
Paul Grant
3 Feb → 18 Feb 2006

The term ‘real’ in any field is usually defined by that which it is not; ‘fake’ or ‘ideal’. In terms of photography, ‘fake’ could refer to “constructed or pictorial photography, while the ‘ideal’ might refer to a wide range of material, including photojournalism, where the work is tinged with sentiment or feeling and the viewer is expected to have a particular reaction to the scene.

Town Hall is a series of photographic images in which a traditional documentary mode is camouflaged by the veneer of commercial studio photography. Paul Grant encourages viewers to question the language of the ‘real’ by producing photographs that seem staged (aesthetically), yet are entirely candid (technically). Despite the images falling squarely into traditional ‘documentary’ conventions, it is difficult to disassociate their artificial aesthetic from the process by which they were produced.

Paul Grant regularly shifts between the mediums of photography and video. He has just completed a Masters at RMIT University. This will be his third solo show.