[The Guardian] The view from Bank Top: Craig Easton’s images of life in Blackburn

The view from Bank Top: Craig Easton’s images of life in Blackburn

Craig Easton, Sony World Photography awards’ photographer of the year 2021, challenges misconceptions and explores ideas of community with his images of life in Blackburn

Craig Easton rarely tells the subjects of his photographs how they should pose. “I feel that my portraits are gifts that are given to me by those I choose to take pictures of,” he says. Take Mohammed Afzal, an abattoir worker with a passion for pigeons: “I’d seen the loft at the back of his house, and I’d knocked on his door to ask if I could photograph him. The fifth or sixth time we made an arrangement to do this – I kept turning up, but he was always out – he’d just got home, and he was still in his work kit. I thought to myself: this is great. But who am I to say how he should look? He wanted to get showered and changed, and in the end I was pleased that I didn’t impose myself on him. It’s his picture, and he looks just as fabulous in his pristine tracksuit top and jeans.”

Afzal appears in Bank Top, a series of photographs taken by Easton in Blackburn in 2019 and 2020: images that, in turn, were originally part of Kick Down the Barriers, a project instigated by Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery to challenge popular misconceptions of the town. “Kick Down the Barriers was a response to a Panorama programme that asked if Blackburn is the most segregated place in the country,” says Easton. “People were pretty upset – it was so simplistic – and a series of artists were invited to look more closely at its communities.”

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