“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 where 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.