We Are Norwich

A couple of months ago it was announced that the EDL (English Defense League) were planning on setting up a protest in Norwich town centre. The aim of their demo was to protest against the city council's decision to ban Pastor Alan Clifford of Norwich Reformed Church for promoting and distributing anti-Islam leaflets. At around 1pm on the 10th November the anti-protest, made up of a group that called themselves We Are Norwich, and which consisted of over double the amount of people than the visiting EDL, arrived at City Hall and congregated around the barrier that had been erected 20m away from the area the EDL were planning on marching to. I went along as a part of the Norwich University College of the Arts group, and was right at the front for most of the demonstration. Amid the chants of 'black and white, unite and fight, fuck the EDL' and 'whose streets? our streets' (mostly led by an inspiring little girl in the middle of the crowd), I was by the barrier taking photographs and keeping the people around me updated with the events transpiring on Twitter. Despite it being a peaceful protest on the We Are Norwich side of things, the EDL apparently started fights on their march down to city hall, with around 4 people being arrested and 2 people injured.

Here are my photographs from the day:

Manifesto

First edition is all drafted up, just waiting to see if I can an illustrator involved and figure out how small to trim these bad boys! 

On Friday I was lucky enough to have a shoot with local up-and-coming model Jude Wright, who I've been dying to set up a shoot with as soon as I spotted her a few months ago in a friend's images. We re-shot a few of the images I took a couple of a weeks ago, re-working them and playing with the lighting as well as working with several new dresses.

The first dress we shot with was the same Georgie Gilbert dress as the previous shoot. We revamped the photos by upping the brightness and creating a much more pastel background, whilst keeping Jude bright and sharp. I then used the texture of the dress to add a border to the photos, which works beautifully and really highlights the busy pattern of the dress.

The next dress we photographed was designed by NUCA fashion design student Lizzie Grant. Lizzie's dress was inspired by Japanese kimonos, visible through the beautiful drape of the fabric and loose-fitting, free-flowing arms. Lizzie's dress has taken the traditional perception of a kimono, however, and adapted it to a modern market - tight-fitting and skin-baring, the dress is both comfortable to wear as well as casting a gorgeous, feminine silhouette. We shot with lilac and pink gels on the lights, and again bordered the image using a texture from within the garment itself; this enhances the elegance of the garment, and adds an overall mood to the photograph - whilst the previous dress was busy with pattern, this dress is simple and dainty. 

The final dress we photographed was a 60's prom dress I managed to pick up from my local charity shop for £6. I've been wanting to photograph with it since I bought it, and finally had the opportunity in my shoot on Friday. On Halloween it acted as my 'zombie prom queen' outfit, so we decided to bring out the pouting moodiness once again and make a couple of quite melancholy - though beautiful - images.

Big thanks to Jude for this shoot, and to Becca Mitton for helping with (aka being in charge of) the lighting. I now have a series of works by around 4 fashion students, and so for the end of this short term I'm going to be working on a very small NUCA Fashion Design A/W 2012 Lookbook zine to display this work. Keep your eyes peeled!