Threads: Recreating a 25 year old project

In 2000 the ‘As We See It’ project engaged three young people to produce a photographic record of Chippenham. Their photographs featured people from the town, and captured a moment in time of shops, businesses and events, through their eyes, as they saw it. Over four months, more than 500 photographs were taken recording everyday people in everyday poses.  The resulting images and negatives were deposited with the museum providing a rich and varied archive, covering hairdressers to market stalls, weddings to fun fairs, producing a snapshot of life at the start of the new millennium.

To mark the 25th anniversary, members of the museum’s afterschool photo club, have set about recreating the project to bring it up to date. Inspired by the concept, the young photographers, aged 11 to 17, with the help of local photographers Tash and Steve from the Little Photo Company, are producing a new set of photographs capturing the town as they see it, 25 years on.

To replicate the original project, the group are taking photographs in black and white, using roll film, with cameras recently donated to the club. While film photography has had a resurgence in the past few years, this is a challenge for the young photographers, who are more familiar with their digital cameras. However, to acknowledge this development in photography over the past 25 years and bring the project up to date the group are also capturing their street scenes using digital technology.

This month, members of the group with guidance from Tash and Steve, spent an afternoon photographing people and places in the Market Place and along the High Street. Using the original project images as reference the group recorded similar scenes showing both similarities and differences in the shops. Through the images, the group have begun to identify lifestyle changes over the past 25 years, such as the move from video to online streaming, bringing an end to the much-loved video shop!

The well-stocked haberdashery is also now missing from the town. This led to the group considering if this represented a move in previous years away from making clothes to the trend for fast fashion.  It was hoped however, that the prominence in the Market Place of the busy tailoring business, which provided so many photo opportunities, suggested a growing desire for more sustainable options.

While the work by Chippenham Museum Photo Club will form the core of the project the aim is to expand the recording opportunity; to develop a rich and varied archive of the town and its community, the museum is asking for people to share their photographs of everyday life in Chippenham both past and present. On 30th August the museum will be running a special ‘As we see it’ Saturday. It will be a chance to catch up on the photo club’s activity but also an opportunity to get involved.

Images taken so far by the group will be on display alongside photographs from the original 2000 project. It is hoped that people will come along with their own images to loan or donate to enhance the record and help tell a more comprehensive story of the town and its community.

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