Mind the Economy Gap

‘Mind the Economy Gap’ is a self-published book as a project for the second term of the BA (Hons) Photography course of ‘A Personal Manifesto’. The project deals with representing the metaphorical gap that is extending in economy, and as the title suggests, appeals to the spectator to acknowledge it. The book’s objective is to juxtapose imagery of homeless along with contemporary architecture and to objectify them as symbols of ultimate poverty and human hardship, and a growing wealth respectively in a modernist-influenced design, and a political context of visual manifestation. The project is formed by a dual manifestation, while the photographs are also used as support for the text to question the truthfulness of photography in context and the importance of truthfulness in having an impact. It is a call to people living in London but also a global presentation of the economy gap that seems to be expanding with the growth of globalisation, gentrification, and the elimination of the middle-class. It aims to reach to the spectator and make him mind the status-quo of the economy, while making him question the potential photography has in transmitting a truthful message and in having an impact. The book in the end responds by questioning the actual meaning of ‘truth’ in photography, posing that the truth in photography does not exist, due to the subjectivity of the medium. It concludes with raising a question of whether an objectification of our subjects in photographic terms is more successful in having a broader impact of the photographer’s contextual message, rationalising the de-humanisation of the artist’s subjects throughout the book. 

Printed March 2016 in London College of Communication, University of the Arts London,

Elephant & Castle

London,SE1 6SB

United Kingdom