About Liz Lock & Mishka Henner
Liz Lock & Mishka Henner have worked on documentary projects together since 2005. Their work has been exhibited in the UK, Poland and China and has been published in printed media such as the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Financial Times, Metro, Flux and the Idler. Much of their project based work involves collaborating with the subjects of their photographs, delivering workshops, sharing personal and public photographic archives and gathering oral histories and testimonies.
About the project, ‘Raw Material’
Raw Material is an exploration of North Staffordshire, a territory rich in artistic and industrial heritage, and until recently home to ceramic giants Royal Doulton and Wedgewood.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, during the heyday of pottery manufacturing, tens of thousands of workers were employed in factories producing fine china for export throughout the world. At their peak, some 4,000 bottle kilns were spread densely across the landscape. Today, only 47 remain.
The area was also a centre of coal mining and steel work, employing some 2,000 men in 1947. The socio-economic fall-out of post-industrial decline is visible today in high numbers of unemployment, derelict buildings and wastelands littered with broken fragments of porcelain.
Stephen (the Tin Man) was part of a troupe of actors performing in the Wizard of Oz at a local theatre. Watching the show, we were struck at how the story of the Wizard of Oz could be interpreted as a parable on urban regeneration and the illusions it has promised. So it seemed appropriate to invite each of the actors out of the theatre in their costumes and produce these portraits in the North Staffordshire landscape, a place that shares the wounds and crises wrought on all post-industrial towns and cities. At the height of the regeneration boom, there was this urge to find a unique selling point to a place and to brand and market it accordingly. But working the way we do, almost every door we went through led us to new cultural terrains which only highlighted the complex identities of any one place. At this theatre, the local production of a Hollywood classic was just as insightful and relevant to the audience as any vision dreamt up by the area’s marketing teams and politicians. Perhaps even more so.
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