British photographer Nick Waplington (1965-) whose striking and distinctive colour images have already won him wide recognition. Waplington was initially recognized and encouraged by Richard Avedon, who discovered him in a photography class at the Royal Academy of Art in London and compared him to a modern-day Brueghel or Rubens. In his first major project Waplington, of working-class origins himself, set out to record all aspects of the lives of two families living in subsidized housing in Nottingham, England. Subverting the convention of depicting Britain’s working class in grim, black-and-white images, he created a visual code all his own with a lush use of colour in photographs that resonate with warmth and humour, poignancy and dignity, and a dash of wackiness.
Waplington’s ‘Living Room’ series, completed between 1987 and 1991, invites viewers into untidy, crowded, noisy lives. We enter the bathroom, the kitchen, the lawn, and, of course, the living room, although ultimately every room becomes a “living room.” A review of the ‘Living Room’ series in the Village Voice said, “Such intimate social realism makes you think it must take exceptional people, on both sides of the camera, to achieve such a degree of osmosis.”
More recently, Waplington’s passion for colour and scale has carried him into a series of panoramas he calls the ‘Circles of Civilization’. Measuring approximately five feet wide by eighteen inches high, these photographs have a timeless, almost mystical nature. Unlike the explosive, chaotic earlier scenes, the panoramas breathe a subtle, controlled energy. Whereas in ‘Living Room’ the artist is infinite yet unseen, in the current ongoing series he becomes part of the subject, cleverly posing, juxtaposing, and superimposing himself beside, against and on landscapes which range from the deserted beaches of Naples to the icons of Easter Island.
Nick Waplington has been honoured with the British and European Kodak Award, 1990 and the European Community Photographic Bursary and Residency in Naples, Italy, 1990/91; and has received a commission from the Gandolfi Foundation Bursary, 1990.
By the late 1980s England had experienced ten years of Conservative government, the collapse of industry, the rise in poverty and unemployment, and centralized government’s abandonment of people and place.
It is in this context that British photographer Nick Waplington spent four years documenting the daily lives of two working-class families on a council estate in Nottingham, England. Rather than embracing the contemporary photographic conventions of social realism, Waplington chronicled the lives of these families in saturated color, capturing an intimate narrative with poignancy and an unexpected humor.
We are thrust into the raw mechanisms of the family unit, exposing the viewer to every intimate moment of domesticity and laying bare the private sanctity of home. Although chaotic visits to local stores and expectant encounters with ice cream vans are all documented, it is in the living room of the title that provides the theatrical backdrop to most of the daily disorder.
“What is remarkable about the photographs is the special way in which they make the intimate something public; something that we, who do not know personally the two families photographed, can look at without any sense (or thrill) of intrusion,” writes John Berger in the accompanying essay.
Nick Waplington makes no dramatic social statements, but rather a quite touching (matter-of-fact) chronicle of the daily struggle of the working-class. In many ways, this makes the work a far more affecting critique of poverty. ‘Living Room’ is a tender and poignant debut title, wonderfully documenting the physical and physiological dysfunctionality of families enduring the plight of economic deficiency.
‘In reaction to — as Nick Waplington puts it — “the grainy, downtrodden, black-and-white interpretation of working-class life” one generally sees. Living room offers lushly coloured glimpses of the communal spirit, fired by the joys, mishaps, and adventures of family life.
Over the course of four years, Nick Waplington became intimately acquainted with two large, working-class families who were living in municipally subsidized “council estates” in Nottingham, England. He spent countless hours becoming part of boisterous chaos of their lives, photographing them with sympathetic spontaneity.
This young, award-winning photographer’s first book, Living Room, makes viewers thoroughly at home in its warm, welcoming, and outrageous world.’
– Extract from an essay by John Berger and Richard Avedon.
This series of work is quite interesting and inviting to the audience through the way Waplington has utilized the viewpoint of his images, through the various angles and viewpoints from different heights creates a inviting look and feel as though the viewer is invited to be apart of the environment/ room with the subjects. And with this inviting feeling to the work, the audience is able to get a real sense of the families and their characteristics. I feel that the images show quite a nitty gritty vibe through the interior and the slightly de-saturated, orangey tone that fills the frame. And this sense of seeing the nitty gritty is what is oddly attractive to the photographs, I think this is because you don’t tend to see this side of people/ of families as in the present day, people are bothered by the way people see them and judge them that images of people and families are usually nice and clean and polished, quite unnatural.
I think the various ways Waplington has used viewpoints in his work gives it a more interesting and intimate look into these living rooms. His images illustrate relatable scenarios that play out in everyone’s homes which I personally like this connection between the work and the audience – being able to recognise and associate with. Like with the other artist work I have searched into, Waplington has also utilised the ambient lighting to light his subjects and environment to create quite a basic and flattering glow on the subjects, which is a natural look. This series differs slightly from others as each image illustrates quite a full/ busy frame, each image has more than one person which provides more atmosphere in the images and more truth. The use of composition works nicely with the viewpoints and angles Waplington has done in these photographs as it creates quite engaging shots of the subjects.
I like this series overall look as each image look and work well next to each other, the style of the colour and tone gives a harmonious effect between the photographs as they match, giving the images as a selection, a sense of belonging and similarity which is quite nice.