Bradford photography festival

I have previously blogged about going to the Bradford photography festival and today i made it to Bradford. I blogged previously about wanting to see Red Saunders work. Red Saunders is a political activist and a commercial photographer who took the festivals theme "evidence" and related it to the past. He chose events in time that are not as well know such as the chartists of 1842. The people of the past Red chose to depict appear to be lesser known hero's of their time and also quite rebellious characters which is fitting as the photographer himself is quite a rebel! The photos themselves were very impressive, dramatic, bold and with great atmospheric chiaroscuro lighting, really good stage scenes. I personally am really interested in history paintings and therefore i loved the references to paintings within the pictures. However the way the picture were presented was a little disappointing for me. They shown loose, not framed, able to see the folds in the paper.This was done apparently to prevent the photos having hierarchy over the viewer as that would have contradicted the messages of the images. However i thought it looked a little unfinished this way and took away some of the awe that could have been in the image. This image "William Cuffrey and the London  Chartists" 1842 is my favourite of all of the images as it has an amazing story behind it and the composoition is just perfect and looks like a still from a film set!