Review: Cherry Styles; Photographs 2009-2011
People like people.
Fact.
Sometimes, people are lucky enough to find people that they like AND who like them back, in an on-going way.
It's crazy but it's true. We call them 'friends'. What a gift! What a low-down and awesomekind of special thing.
Photographs 2009-2011 by Cherry Styles, is a 7"x7" book, printed by synchronise witches, an independent printing company started in 2012 and run by Cherry Styles.
All of the photographs in Photographs were shot on 35mm film between 2009-2011 in Norwich.
Styles says "I used to take so many pictures, lots of them never getting 'used' for anything. Some of the friends in this book have since moved away- and I have moved away- I guess the pictures that still seemed really important were the ones of friends that have stuck around, even though we don't live down the road from each other anymore.."
Getting to look through Photographs is like being gifted entry into someone else's circle, at least for a little while. We see shared jokes, vulnerable moments, physical closeness, lots of smiles, a deep chat; we see bedrooms, kitchens, sofa's; we see intimate glimpses of a group of people risking liking each other.
What a treat! what a gift!
What a low-down and awesomekind of special thing!
And the seeing is a seeing that includes touch, it includes the turning of pages and the weight of a thing in a hand. It is the not the lit-screen seeing of Facebook or the like, pictures of 'friends' we scroll through and click 'Like'. It is a seeing that is quiet and personal, no hum of computer. The pages of this book are bound together; friends lie, closed, one on top of the other, until they are peeled apart into the light, and then turned over and returned to the closeness of pages bound tight.
Photographs is a book about a specific time and a specific place. But it is also timeless in that it is mostly it is a book about people. A book about people who like other people.
Treasure.
Photographs 2009-2011 is available from http://synchronisewitches.com/
Cherry Styles blog is http://cherrystyles.co.uk/
Writer; Jen Steiner