We have now completed the first week of running the pop-up studio in the Packing Room Gallery, in the Henry Jones Art Hotel, so I thought I'd write a little update to share a bit about how the first week went.
As you may have read in my previous blogs, Hobart photographer, Andrew Wilson, has a pop-up studio running and is photographing participants from the 177 Nations of Tasmania podcast. The photos are being printed on site and displayed in the gallery fairly soon after. My job is to write some text to accompany the photos as well as documented the process in video.
In the first week, we've had around 20 people come in for photos, from a really interesting mix of countries such as Honduras, Tanzania, Chile, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Jordan and Austria. The studio space is quite an intimate environment which seems to lend itself to conversation and story-telling, and it's been a really great experience to listen to our participants tell us their stories and to share some things about their cultures with us and also some of the challenges they've faced in Tasmania at times.
One of Andrew's goals is to tell a bit of a story through the photo by elicit certain reactions or emotional responses. Sometimes this process just involves getting the participant to think about a particular memory or important thing in their life and let that come out naturally through their eyes or face. Sometimes, while filming this process, I could really see the change on the person's face.
Some people have come in feeling a bit nervous or self-conscious, which is totally understandable, but when asking them about it at the end, everyone seems to have found the process quite relaxing and enjoyable, which has been very gratifying to hear. For me, it's been really satisfying to spend time with such a diverse, interesting and fun group of people and these photo shoots are also a really great occasion to see people's personalities come out and shine and I feel like we've had a lot of great characters come through over the past week, and I hope you can see some of this in the behind-the-scenes pictures here.
We are also attempting to raise money through the Australian Cultural Fund donations page to produce book containing the photos and stories of people from over 100 different countries that have appeared on the podcast. If you are interested in helping you can donate here. All donations are tax deductible.
The exhibition will continue until March 7 and is supported by a grant from Creative Hobart.
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