All aboard for PhotoEast – photographer in residence on Ipswich Buses
Award-winning photographer, George Georgiou, who spent over a decade living and photographing in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey, comes to Suffolk next month to turn his lens on the streets of Ipswich – from the top deck of an Ipswich Bus.
His residency on the buses, supported by the five area committees of Ipswich Borough Council and the bus company, Ipswich Buses, is part of PhotoEast 2016, Suffolk’s first photography festival, which launches 24 May- 25 June in collaboration with University Campus Suffolk (UCS).
From 4 April, George will be traversing the length and breadth of Ipswich on various bus routes, capturing the unscripted and candid moments playing out on the streets below to create a unique visual record of the town. The resulting photographs will come together as a large-scale exhibition on the Waterfront during the PhotoEast Festival.
On Friday 8 April, George is inviting ten lucky bus travellers to join him in a hands-on photography workshop on one of the routes. He will talk about his work and share tips for creating street photography, helping participants document their own version of Ipswich street life. A call-out for participants will be posted on Facebook via PhotoEast.
Ipswich Buses has commissioned 14 Gallery Buses, which will exhibit George’s photographs during PhotoEast and over the next 24 months. They will also be running a ‘Street of the Day’ social media campaign, inviting the public to identify which streets appear in photographs released daily during the Festival. Free bus travel vouchers will be awarded to the winners.
Jeremy Cooper, Managing Director of Ipswich Buses is excited by the project and says “It’s time we livened up the interiors of our new buses! This project will allow us to do just that and also connect our passengers with PhotoEast. We hope many people will use our buses to get into town to see the exhibition and be part of this great artistic event.”
The Ipswich Omnibus project is familiar territory for George. In 2008, returning to London after a decade overseas, he saw his native city through different eyes. “I was surprised by the speed of change that had taken place,” he says. “I wanted to document the city, its movements and migrations, its landscape and architecture, its diversity and energy.” The Last Stop panoramic photography book, which resulted from this project, provided the inspiration for Omnibus in Ipswich for PhotoEast.
Adrian Evans, Creative Director of the PhotoEast Festival says “Ipswich isn’t London, but it has history, diversity and as many stories as there are people in the town. George’s photographs help us focus on the everyday narratives going on around us, which we all too often ignore. I would like to say a massive ‘thankyou’ to Ipswich Buses and Borough councillors for supporting this project and for recognising the role that public transport can play in the visual arts.”
