Manchester Central Library exhibition tour and Q+A
Manchester Central Library 2023
It was an honour last week to have a visit from Brandei Estes (former head of photography at Sotheby’s EMEA) to my latest exhibition at Manchester Central Library.
She was particularly taken aback by the quality of the documentary photography on show calling it a ‘Love letter to Manchester’. That it is all shot on film gives it a timeless feel.
Her visit was filmed and I look forward to showing it to you at a later date.
Exhibition Tour and Q&A session
It is also time, with less than two weeks to go, for me to remind you that I have an exhibition tour and Q&A session on Saturday 25th November being held at Manchester Central Library. It will be hosted by Caterina Mestrovich who is an industry specialist and curator having worked at one of London’s top photography galleries.
FREE tickets are available via Eventbrite. The button below will take you there.
Robert John Watson BBC News Street Photography
The BBC did a piece about my latest exhibition.
It’s not every day that you hear whilst doing a BBC radio interview that there is a news article about you also. Click on the image above or the button at the end to read the article.
The last time I was in the press was when Dutch newspaper NRC used one of my seascapes (Blackpool 0630) to promote UNSEEN Amsterdam photography fair last year. That was a surprise also. People were coming to Albumen Gallery’s stand to see the picture and indeed to buy it.
The above picture - Blackpool 0630 is being exhibited at my current exhibition in my hometown of Warrington in Cheshire. It will also feature at my exhibition in Manchester opening in October of this year. I will keep you posted about that closer to the time.
In the meantime, I’m doing a talk and Q&A session this Saturday (25th March) in the gallery with all my pictures.
It is an Eventbrite ticketed event and it would be great to see you there.
Links below to both the BBC article and free tickets to the artist’s talk I’m doing.
Warrington Exhibition 2023
News of my hometown exhibition in Warrington
Gallery 4 Warrington Museum and Art Gallery
What a fabulous honour it is to be asked to return to my roots and exhibit work in my hometown.
This exhibition has been a long time coming after it was found that the roof of the museum needed a complete overhaul. This is no small provincial town museum and the work that needed to be done emptying the place and then a whole year of work was quite taxing.
However, they got there in the end and my exhibition could be rescheduled. And here we are! Opening in Thursday 9th February and running till 16th April, I’m exhibiting my two genre of work.
This is the first time so many of my seascapes have been on a wall together and they look fabulous. So calming and rich in colour. In fact, most people are surprised that Blackpool can look so colourful. Even more so when they find out that non of the colours are edited in any way. These are the exact colours that the camera sees. When viewers don’t believe it, I have a video taken with my iPhone to show them that it is indeed true.
On the opposite wall, is a selection of my documentary photography from London, Paris and Manchester. I have chosen to show the series that I call ‘Lovers’. These are scenes that I come across whilst out on the streets of couples embracing and kissing. For many reasons, these are a challenge to photograph. It makes them very special to me and to finally see a gallery wall and good lighting doing them justice is very uplifting.
Subscribers to my newsletter are welcome to come along to the opening night on Thursday February 9th from 7pm till 9pm where there will be drinks and canapés for you to enjoy. I’ll be giving a brief talk about the pictures and the stories behind them as well at some point during the evening.
Some of you may know that I have a passion for photographing dancers. So I’m taking this opportunity to also show for the first time a new series of pictures that I’m working on. The dancer that I photographed will also be there on the opening night. He’s quite a character and appeared in the latest Sam Smith video!
If you would like to come along to the opening night private view, please get in touch via the contact page of my website.
I look forward to seeing you there and hearing your thoughts on these new pictures.
And, as always, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter.