Durden, Mark

Grant, Paul

English

This work results from a collaboration with Professor Mark Durden and the Liverpool John Moores University Archive, exploring the archive of Keith Medley, a film-maker and photographer who settled in Liverpool and ran a studio in New Brighton that was active for a considerable period over the 20th century. Medley had covered events in and around Liverpool over the greater second half of the 20th Century, and Liverpool John Moores University cultural collections now hold a great deal of material in the Aldham Roberts centre, and this is being explored, catalogued and 'unpacked' by the author. This particular event focuses on the portraiture that Medley amassed as part of his commercial life -pictures of people that hold a real resonance as documents that describe quite beautifully a cross section of a community through the buoyant 60s into the more challenging 1970s.The questions that preoccupied preliminary research centred around how the process was influenced by the economic necessities of studio production in the North West in the 1960s. The precise process deployed by the photographer was to a large degree unique at that moment –whilst the majority of commercial studios were using film by this time, Medley continued to use a complex process that impacted on both the ceremony of the photographic process but also the quality and structure of the glass plate rendition.The research process has included regular visits to the archive, with the support of Liverpool John Moore’s University. It has enabled the recording of audio interviews and meetings with studio workers still alive and family members who have a particular knowledge of the processes employed and circumstances visitors experienced. Wider research has been around the particular historical phase in which the work was made. A buoyant moment in social and cultural history on Merseyside –evident in music and the wider social scene (that can be evidenced through the styling and influences adopted by Medley’s sitters), it was clear that the work was produced to assist the mobility of local people through photography for passports –and this mobility is intriguing at a moment of greater engagement with Europe for vacation, alongside the more traditional notions of emigration and displacement familiar to the region over the preceding century

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Doubletake	  :	  The	  Photographic	  portraits	  of	  Keith	  Medley	  Exhibi<on	  and	  publica<on	  Liverpool	  Walker	  Art	  Gallery	  	  17th	  May-­‐	  15th	  September	  2013	  Doubletake:	  The	  Photographic	  Portraiture	  of	  Keith	  Medley	  	  	  	  Liverpool	  Walker	  Art	  Gallery	  	  17th	  May-­‐	  15th	  September	  2013	  DOUBLETAKE	  Format:	  84	  pages,	  hardback	  Publisher:	  Liverpool	  John	  Moores	  Archives	  Photographs	  by	  Keith	  Medley,	  Curated	  for	  an	  exhibi<on	  at	  the	  Walker	  Art	  Gallery,	  Liverpool	  by	  Ken	  Grant	  &	  Mark	  Durden	  ISBN:	  978-­‐0-­‐9576173-­‐0-­‐8	  Dimensions:	  140	  x	  195	  x	  18mm	  

Doubletake: The Photographic portraits of Keith Medley

https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/ws/files/11405994/Medley_Doubletake.pdf

Doubletake: The Photographic portraits of Keith Medley

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