Performing Photography

Performing Photography [2026] is a development in my practice around performance and photography established by my theatrical play The Lisa and John Slideshow [2017]. It was borne from participation with families I photographed in the late 80’s to make my series Pictures from the Real World. Colour Photographs 1987-88 [2013].

Performing Photography-Jillian Edelstein’ that was staged at Fyvie Hall, Regent St, University of Westminster with a view to building on preceent.The performance, devised by the author, was included within a series of monthly, talk events, titled Photoforum, open to, and free to public access as well as within curriculum. This live ‘shoot’ as performance was functional and applied to a ‘real-world’ need, i.e. an actual commission, [for the British Journal of Photography] thus heightening what was experienced by audience. As ‘Knowledge Exchange’ this collapsed boundaries between an academic discourse and vocational ambitions that are often part of a students’ interests.

Both works, propose a critical observation of the ways in which photographic representation may be constructed and negotiated through relatively populist forms of, in the first instance, narrative verbatim theatre, and in the second, a facilitated and consensual appropriation of real-life is staged by non-performers. Crucially, both pieces of work involve live and staged considerations of those being represented within the image.

Performing Photography progresses these ideas within a nexus of varying theatrical and participatory discourse. The event in question was live and unscripted, and I will reflect critically on events/dialogue that occurred during it and that potent.

Of particular interest to me in such performances, are tensions between what is fictional, or ‘staged’ or pre-meditated; and ‘the real’, an authenticity of being, perhaps. This was certainly exemplified by the difficulties I have had in initially describing the Performing Photography event, although the term ‘Live Portrait Shoot’ was a useful shorthand title that introduced the ostensible experience.

Both The Lisa and John Slideshow and Performing Photography were driven by heuristic research methods, with the ambitions that the foundational premise was to how consider how representation performs knowledge in differing contexts and highlight social agency through critiques of production. In Performing Photography I am interested in how the dialogical process plays out within a ‘shoot’ and what occurs within its multiple agendas.