Barbara Laws: Nottingham Portraits at Lakeside Arts

There was something quite magical about standing in the sunshine looking at snapshots of a time gone by in Nottingham.

The majority of Laws’ portraits were photographed between 1976 and 1980, while the Nottingham Meadows neighbourhood was being cleared for redevelopment. Laws documented a world and all its history being dismantled piece by piece.

Some of these portraits are of people I knew or saw regularly on the streets of Nottingham. Others are of strangers or record fleeting contact with the travelling people who came to the Goose Fair during those years.

To make all of them I used a Mamiya twin-lens camera with a waist-level viewfinder. It meant at the point of taking each picture there was nothing to obstruct eye contact between the two of us. What remains so long afterwards is an invitation to renew my experience of that moment of connection. I photograph what attracts me. I’ve always been drawn the borders of the ordinary.

Barbara Laws

Nottingham Portraits is on display at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham until 19th February.

See more by Barbara Laws on her website.