A retrospective of photographs by Paul Reas has just opened at Guernsey Museum at Candie Gardens and will run until 31 December. Fables of Faubus is a collaboration between Guernsey Photography Festival and Guernsey Museums and brings together 30 years of photographs.
The exhibition first chronicles deindustrialisation and consumer culture during the 1980s, with Paul describing Thatcher’s legacy as leading British culture “from a ‘we’ to a ‘me’ generation”. The work moves on to critique the commercial and editorial visual culture of the 1990s, and documents gentrification and the disenfranchisement of working-class communities in the 2000s and beyond.
Paul states the work as traversing “the years of decline of industry and the fall out from that, communities being de-centred and levelled… I would say I photograph people but I think the pictures are more about the systems people find themselves in.”
We were lucky enough to work with Paul a few years ago on his book Fables of Faubus and so we are really to see the work continue to reach new audiences. Congratulations Paul!
