George Scane – Peripheral Launch Interview

OGA are proud to announce the launch of a new addition to the current selection of zines available in our shop. Peripheral has been produced by Bristol based photographer George Scane and coincide with the launch we’ve conducted a short interview to find out a little more about the project and it’s creator.

Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about where you are based?

You know where I live!…My name is George Scane and I’m currently based in a part of Bristol that is Easton.

In terms of genre, where do you place your photographic output?

I would say that it’s definitely within a documentary style but to go a bit further I’d like to think that my work revolves around an almost social commentary about the surroundings I find myself at a particular time.

Can you tell us a little more about Peripheral? What was it that drew you to the outskirts of Bristol?

The project was sparked from some previous work I did, a typology of the council run public toilets in Bristol. I was interested in the current usage of these conveniences, how many of these on the current councils records list were actually still active and maintained. I visited various postcodes around Bristol, and discovered that many had been closed due to lack of funding or run into disrepair and some were taken over for a place to hold a small business, one had been turned into a family barber shop another was undergoing a makeover for a new café. Passing through these area codes I noticed that these weren’t the only public amenities that that had fallen off, public libraries, youth centers, local playing fields and in some cases big businesses like Rolls Royce and Industries like the port at Avonmouth are a shadow of what they once were. I felt that there was a story to be told here and I wanted to find out more.

How has the final outcome of this project changed over time and what made you decide to print a limited run of photographic Zines featuring images from the project?

Well, I ended up taking hundreds of pictures for this project photographing with an almost diarist approach, many different themes kept cropping up like the lack of funding I mentioned, industry rapidly dying out, nature and man’s relationship with it, the reclamation of nature and so on that I didn’t really know what I was photographing by the end of it, or what my work was even about. But all this meant was that I had painted a portrait of what the edges of Bristol said to me. It was a portrait that depicted my experience of these places, my interpretation and responses to them.
I exhibited my work as an almost installation piece showing over 300 images, (again with the diarist approach) I wanted to convey a record and a journey and one that the viewer could make for their own. The book was more of my personal edit, what I had discovered and unveiled and what I felt needed to be highlighted.
I decided to publish a run of 50 zines. It’s a shorter edit and a lot smaller but I wanted to do this to share the project with people who haven’t seen it. It’s also a nice way to finalize the project and mark the beginnings of some new work!

Is there one or more images shot during this project that has a greater personal significance?

I think that a lot of the images I selected for the book resonated somewhere within me. The portraits especially, each person I spoke to had an interesting story to tell, from a man that spends his whole life walking from place to place to a woman who re-treated to Bristol due to a family tragedy. It would have been nice to have recorded some of the conversations I had, not necessarily for the work but for my own personal record – something to think about for the future…

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What does the future hold for George Scane?

I’m not quite sure really. I want to start a project about the river Avon but it’s finding the time (and money) to start. My brother has a camper van that I might borrow – it would be a great way to photograph the river. In the meantime though I have been focusing on summer plans. I’d quite like to go to Eastern Europe on an Inter rail pass or something similar and take photographs!

To see more from George Scane head over to georgescane.com

If you would like a copy of George Scane Peripheral head over to our newly updated ONEGIANARM Shop.