An Interview with Joshua Dryden

I am student at Bradford School of Art currently studying on the BA Photography course, focusing on commercial and advertising photography. My exhibition for the Saltaire Arts Trail is about my family and the aspect of social distancing. I wanted to show how even though my family are unable to visit each other at the moment we are still able to come together as a family to create.

Q. Your work is very responsive to the current covid-19 pandemic, particularly as our only means of representation right now is digital photographs. Can you tell us a bit more about how you’ve had to adapt and respond to the restraints of lockdown?

I chose to develop and adapt my work to the current lockdown situation by photographing my greater family. Initially I planned to only to focus my work around my grandmother - documenting her and her home but due to lockdown regulations I was no longer able to pursue the project as I had originally envisioned it. I decided to create imagery of my dad and imediate family in lockdown to show that as a family we are still connecting with each other, this links in with my larger interest in visualising my own family tree.

Q. You mentioned that this project felt collaborative for your family, is this the first time you’ve worked in this way? If so, do you think the experience will influence your future works?

I think I have worked collaboratively before, just not with my own family members, so this was a different experience for me. I enjoyed working with them, initially I thought it may be difficult or unusual however I felt really comfortable photographing my relatives just how I would approach a usual photoshoot with a client.

Q. Can you tell us about this work’s involvement with The Impressions Gallery, for the project ‘Forget Me Not’?

The 'Forget Me Not' project is a collaborative project that my university was involved in. We helped the New Focus group work within the studio and as a university we supported them with contributing our own imagery. The project was really well received by the community and has become even more so due to lockdown. News of the exhibition has also been published on the BBC Culture in Quarantine column.

This work was created as part of Forget-me-not, a digital project run by New Focus, Impressions Gallery's young people's collective.

See more of the 'Forget Me Not' project here.

To see more of Joshua Dryden's work click the link below

@joshdrydenphoto