inspirations for the shoot
Finding inspiration for this project has been quite difficult due to the lack of photographers documenting food banks, I do have a couple photographers that inspired me from last term but feel that their work will still influence me for this project too.
Charlie Clift
Clift loves telling people's stories in an intimate and unique way. He has been commissioned by the likes of BAFTA, GQ, The Sunday Times Magazine and The BBC, and his work has been featured in the National Portrait Gallery, the Creative Review Photo Annual and the British Journal of Photography.
Clift wanted to shine a light on what he was seeing while volunteering and so began photographing the food bank he was working in, which was a local church in Streatham transformed into a warehouse. “Donations arrive, are sorted, repacked, then delivered all over South London. It’s run by about 80 volunteers overseen by a few members of staff,” says Clift. His hope for the series is to increase awareness and also encourage those who can to donate and help their community.
“By focusing my camera on a bag of pasta or a jar of mayonnaise alongside the portraits I aim to make you realise that people are struggling to get even the most basic of products. Place that image next to a powerful portrait and the problem becomes hard to ignore.”
I chose Charlie as one of my influences for this project as his food bank shoot is incredible, the composition and lighting in his images are something I am hoping to carry through to my shoots.
Kristian Buus
Kristian Buus is an independent photographer and film maker working with people for people. He tells their stories and raises awareness.
"Voices from the Vault" is an ongoing project started in spring 2015, giving a voice to people who find themselves at a foodbank. Each interview is a few minutes long and the portraits and videos are photographed and filmed on location at the foodbanks in Hackney. Everyone is unique and the following stories uncover issues such as ATOS and their questionable physical assesments, mental illness, housing benefit caps and being failed by a benefit system no longer focused on helping those in need.
I chose Kristian Buus as another influence as I would like to include similar shots like his in my final major project. I feel that capturing where the food ends up and who benefits from the food would be such an amazing story to tell.
Hannah Mornement
Hannah is a Brighton based documentary photographer and began photographing professionally over 15 years ago, having previously used photography as a tool in her fine art work. She has a passion for humanitarian and human-interest issues and produces work as a sensitive observer, as with the body of work, ‘Food bank Britain’. This project documents the daily struggle of ordinary people caught in the vicious cycle of food poverty in Britain through the eyes of beneficiaries and food bank volunteers.
"Britain’s hidden hunger is difficult to spot and often hard to understand. Difficult to spot due to the ‘visual’ of poverty in this country, and hard to understand because we have a welfare state which is supposed to support those on the margins of society."
I chose Hannah as my final influence for this project as she looks closely into the lives of people receiving the food and I think that this is a really important part of the distribution chain.
