BOOK OF ROY - Neil Drabble
From 1998 to 2005, Neil Drabble photographed an American teenager, Roy, as he grew from adolescence to adulthood. On one level, this vast body of work can be seen as a fascinating document of a transition that is always compelling. Closer examination reveals other nuances; a collaboration, a partnership, a personal portrait and at the same time a universal image of adolescence. Drabble has chosen not to depict the significant events that might appear in a family album, nor the definitive moments associated with documentary photography. Instead, these photographs focus on apathetic, off-stage periods, the "in-between moments" of everyday life. This focus on marginal passages of ignored time places the viewer at the heart of adolescence, defined as the period between childhood and adulthood, suspended between desire (for the deferred promise of adulthood) and regret (for the loss of childhood as a refuge).
Photographing the same person repeatedly and intimately during their formative years, a sense of mirroring began to emerge, awakening something of the artist's adolescent self, blurring the line between portraiture and self-portraiture. Neil Drabble grew up in a gray Manchester of the 1970s, watching American TV shows and dreaming of a perceived glamour of an adolescence lived in places where teenagers ate pizza, drank Dr Pepper, chatted on the phone with friends until late and drove cars rather than waited at rainy bus stops. Roy's process of representation and the collaboration between older photographer and younger subject allowed Drabble to reframe his own teenage years in a way, and to engage vicariously with aspects of an alternative American youth he had coveted across the Atlantic.
Published by Mack Books, 2019
24 cm x 28 cm, 132 pages, new
ISBN 9781912339501
From 1998 to 2005, Neil Drabble photographed an American teenager, Roy, as he grew from adolescence to adulthood. On one level, this vast body of work can be seen as a fascinating document of a transition that is always compelling. Closer examination reveals other nuances; a collaboration, a partnership, a personal portrait and at the same time a universal image of adolescence. Drabble has chosen not to depict the significant events that might appear in a family album, nor the definitive moments associated with documentary photography. Instead, these photographs focus on apathetic, off-stage periods, the "in-between moments" of everyday life. This focus on marginal passages of ignored time places the viewer at the heart of adolescence, defined as the period between childhood and adulthood, suspended between desire (for the deferred promise of adulthood) and regret (for the loss of childhood as a refuge).
Photographing the same person repeatedly and intimately during their formative years, a sense of mirroring began to emerge, awakening something of the artist's adolescent self, blurring the line between portraiture and self-portraiture. Neil Drabble grew up in a gray Manchester of the 1970s, watching American TV shows and dreaming of a perceived glamour of an adolescence lived in places where teenagers ate pizza, drank Dr Pepper, chatted on the phone with friends until late and drove cars rather than waited at rainy bus stops. Roy's process of representation and the collaboration between older photographer and younger subject allowed Drabble to reframe his own teenage years in a way, and to engage vicariously with aspects of an alternative American youth he had coveted across the Atlantic.
Published by Mack Books, 2019
24 cm x 28 cm, 132 pages, new
ISBN 9781912339501
From 1998 to 2005, Neil Drabble photographed an American teenager, Roy, as he grew from adolescence to adulthood. On one level, this vast body of work can be seen as a fascinating document of a transition that is always compelling. Closer examination reveals other nuances; a collaboration, a partnership, a personal portrait and at the same time a universal image of adolescence. Drabble has chosen not to depict the significant events that might appear in a family album, nor the definitive moments associated with documentary photography. Instead, these photographs focus on apathetic, off-stage periods, the "in-between moments" of everyday life. This focus on marginal passages of ignored time places the viewer at the heart of adolescence, defined as the period between childhood and adulthood, suspended between desire (for the deferred promise of adulthood) and regret (for the loss of childhood as a refuge).
Photographing the same person repeatedly and intimately during their formative years, a sense of mirroring began to emerge, awakening something of the artist's adolescent self, blurring the line between portraiture and self-portraiture. Neil Drabble grew up in a gray Manchester of the 1970s, watching American TV shows and dreaming of a perceived glamour of an adolescence lived in places where teenagers ate pizza, drank Dr Pepper, chatted on the phone with friends until late and drove cars rather than waited at rainy bus stops. Roy's process of representation and the collaboration between older photographer and younger subject allowed Drabble to reframe his own teenage years in a way, and to engage vicariously with aspects of an alternative American youth he had coveted across the Atlantic.
Published by Mack Books, 2019
24 cm x 28 cm, 132 pages, new
ISBN 9781912339501
