Spring Afternoon, 2020/Streetlight Daydreams

You’re invited to an encounter with collective memory; a wander round the streets of Norwich in the early days of the first lockdown; familiar sights rendered lonesome, peaceful, desolate.

This collection of photographs seeks to evoke the uncanny feelings felt by a city in isolation, but collectively; a sudden jolt into the tides of history. An occasion to reflect how those events have shaped the present, and remember the strange aloofness of a fine spring afternoon in empty streets.

Alongside this exhibit the artist is displaying a selection of work produced in the years since the pandemic, exploring the harsh beauty and solitude of the city by night.

About the Artist:
Adam Thriftless first found a passion for photography as a teenager, and has spent the past few years developing his practice in Norwich with an emphasis on night and architectural subjects.

Firmly committed to analogue techniques, he is fascinated by the material qualities and substance of the photograph as a physical object, which has led him to a practice of creating portraits using an Afghan Box Camera, to bring these qualities alive for the observer.

The Artist says...
'I find the effect of place and season on one’s state of mind to be profound, and so it was important to me to exhibit these images in the city where they were taken at the same time of year. More than anybody, this is a body of work for Norvicians and I hope it connects with them in the same evocative way it does for me; the purpose of documentary photography like this tends to change with time, and to an audience from another place or time its effect may be blunter than to those who have walked these streets and lived in that peculiar state of being.

My night-time work also contains some emotion but also fascination; the harshness, colour and electricity of the streets by night that I seek to bring to mind. Trees in this condition intrigue me, with their permanently-vexed contest for space with artificial structures—the starkness of colour inflicted upon the scene by streetlamps and the untidy progress in their piecemeal replacement by whiter, cleaner, modern lighting.'