Paul Batt
"The 2 main focuses within my work have been a fascination with sites of human habitation and the individual’s role within a given sphere. The work included here examines these ideas from different perspectives. Such as sporting venues in the Sports Space series 2002, or adapted spaces with arts related connections in the Creative Space series 2003 through to sites that contain a science or pseudo science connection in the Untitled Spaces series of 2004. Much of my work has been concerned with comparing the subtle differences between places or people that belong to a group as with the Untitled Hostelseries in 1999.
With the series of hostel portraits, I documented the residents of a hostel near where I lived, whom I had come to know. My interest was in trying to convey a sense of their lives through the experiences etched on their faces. After this I began to explore the possibilities of ‘non direct portraiture’, or ways of portraying an individual or a group indirectly, through the things or places they used. Vacant spaces can act as a portrait, they are intimate in that sense. The photographing of such places can contain a myriad of clues as to who and what kind of people inhabit them and the similarities or differences between them and between the sites themselves. By documenting them I tried to create a quiet sense of these places, almost as a vacated stage awaiting the actors."
(Paul Batt 2007)
