KEEP LEFT and Twins 1 & 2
were collaborations with Jawed Ashraf made around 2004 / 2005. In February 2005 we both attended a 2-day workshop on Photography and Fiction led by Melanie Manchot. There was time in-between the two days for participants to produce new work. We'd already made Twins at this point but made the video to present at the workshop. We showed some big prints of Twins but everybody seemed more keen on the video version, KEEP LEFT. I've merged both projects onto this page to make my life easier.
KEEP LEFT is a dual-perspective peek into small pockets of urban life, masquerading as fiction. The encounters with shoppers, tourists and cyclists, moving through a media event, deliveries and street cleaning all meld into a brief found portrait of one day in Central London. The film questions everyday perceptions of the world around us and presents fleeting scenes that prompt the observers' desire to construct narratives. At the same time the double viewpoint presents a spectacular sense of the possible: hinting at alternative endings, highlighting entirely different characters and demonstrating that there can only be versions of the truth. By Gary Alexander and Jawed Ashraf.
Click the arrows to make it full screen.
Twins 1
These pictures were made by loosely synchronising our cameras to take a photo automatically every minute. We'd do hour-long sessions so we'd end with 60 pairs from each session. We did it multiple times on different days. Sometimes we'd end up on different sides of the street, looking at completely different scenes. Other times, one of us might decide on a picture and try to get in position in time for the next automatic 'click'. The other might notice and try to join in, or not. We often ended up in each others pictures. Then the main, non-automatic, process was going through the pairs and deciding which ones we wanted to keep. There are lots of ways that pairs can work together even when the connection isn't obvious.
Twins 1 was shot in March and April 2004.
Twins 2
This second set were edited from 4 sessions shot between September and December 2004.
"... it's like a little crime game trying to figure things out..."
In 2007, another friend organised a shoot where we had 4 cameras synchronised wirelessly. I posted one of the pictures on the blog: Twins and Quads