Joseph Kaler, London 2019

When your born in a town like Brighton in the mid-seventies, you spend your early years safe within steely assumptions of what it means to be British. The everyday paraphernalia of punk, scooters, soul boys, candy floss and slot machines immerse you in a particular picture postcard world of Britishness. No one questions that.

 

And when that changes. And you not sure why.  You begin to ask yourself some fundamental questions…. You start to look harder and listen more, not just at stuff around you, but to storytellers that had gone before; you try and find answers.

 

The direct messages in realist imagery has an instant appeal: Mid C20 cinema from Italy and then the UK, photography by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank as well as narratives in music all seem to address those fundamental questions. This imagery stays with you, seeps into your consciousness and work at you from all sides. You realize that some of the most powerful photography works on these deeper, emotional levels, and it was this potential that I wanted to explore.

 

The selected group of images on this site represent an attempt to realize and develop some of those formal and theoretical challenges, as well as try to reconcile the questions, pressures and dreams which shape the lives of people in the British Isles today.

 

 

See review from Andrea Spath at E Magazine

"Joseph Kaler's photos seem like snapshots of life, or moments captured from a film. His models do not pose in glamorous worlds, but appear casually against everyday London backdrops. Kaler's photographic intention breaks with conventional photography, a bold step once taken by Philip-Lorca diCorcia with his street photography for a renowned clothing manufacturer in the nineties. Joseph Kaler aims to achieve more than simply presenting fashion in appealing ambiences, he seeks to enhance pictures with a deeper content and emotion: seemingly authentic scenarios tell stories, arouse feelings and appear to document real events.

 

All the pictures in his latest series were taken in East London, a part of the metropolis that has been shaped by unemployment and poverty, but also by a special group of people that inspired Charles Dickens. Melancholy and hope still lie close together here, creating a unique atmosphere. In this environment, an emancipated, confident, young group of people with a new attitude to life has emerged. To Joseph Kaler, photographing East London means concerning himself with issues such as the identity, nationality and sexual roles of young men."

© Joseph Kaler