Christian Fowler

Homelessness figures in the UK are rising and with Night Shelters starting to close down, there will be more people on the street trying to take shelter. “But for the Grace of God” looks at the spaces of where rough sleepers take shelter in the Gloucestershire area. In the fleeting moments of everyday we catch the remains of where someone has taken shelter for the night. These intriguing spaces are often dark, strange and sometimes threatening and all we have is the objects left behind as to understand who inhabits there. This occupancy is separate from our consciousness operating below the surface in cities and is only recognised peripherally by our racing society. Each object photographed is from other known locations of where rough sleepers take shelter and are the remains of what they have left behind.

The work, “Silent Reflections” consists of portraits taken in a charity gym whilst the subjects are training. The subjects do not train to be an athlete nor do they to compete in any event but only to keep focused on themselves and their future. The subjects represent prisoners who are on probation and ex-prisoners who, through the support of the local community and the community gym, they are able to keep focused on their own rehabilitation; to keep determined and dedicated for a better way of life.. I have used a consistent strategy of pushing the subjects out of context of “the gym” to allow the viewer to be engaged more with the subject and not what they are doing. In this way, I am trying to show the quietness, the stillness and loneliness of thought and determination within a subject.

The family has always been the focus for support, strength and a foundation for building the pillars of a child’s future. It’s a time when a child flourishes in the warmth and security of the mother and father figure. It is memories from this time in one’s life that never completely vanish. The house becomes the physical foundation of where these memories take place; the walls become a sponge, absorbing the memories that may have mostly slipped away in the ocean of our lives. The home is that omnipresent being always watching, looking on observing the moments in our lives that are both joyful and sorrowful. It remembers times that perhaps we would rather not remember and sometimes fails to remind us of times we would. The emotions come flooding back, and that moment from long ago stares you in face in its all unapologetic honesty. We fruitlessly attempt to make up for lost time; to try and ease the pain of the things that we wished we’d done differently. We laugh once more at the times we loved; a smile adorns our tear soaked cheek as the distant echoes of laughter ring in our ears for what seems just...