Street Reverb Magazine

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Photographer:

Paul Russell

Description:

The UK town centres I walk round are in the grips of recession, with familiar high street names still disappearing. One sector that is doing well is the beauty business, I see nail bars full of customers and new glass-fronted gyms with young men and women toning and sculpting their bodies. This is stuff you can’t buy on the Internet, and some people still have money to give nature a helping hand.

The results of these endeavours are then paraded on the streets fake tans, hair extensions, acrylic nails, biceps, the six pack all remade realities.

I would use the discrete capabilities of the Xperia ray to photograph this augmented reality, candidly in the streets of several English town centres.

I first became interested in this general idea when I shot a brief, informal commission for an exhibition called Landscape and Industry at Poole Lighthouse arts centre where I was tasked with photographing people at work in Poole. In the couple of afternoons I had to shoot the project it struck me how the only places that seemed to be doing well were the nail bars and tanning centres.

Bio:

Born in London, 1966. I am a publishing professional based in Dorset.

My photos have appeared in The Guardian Weekend magazine, the Independent on Sunday, The Big Issue (Australia), The Mail on Sunday (cropped), bbc.co.uk, Digifoto Pro Magazine, AP magazine, and David Alan Harvey’s Burn magazine.

I am one of 46 photographers profiled in the recent Thames & Hudson book Street Photography Now, am a member of the In-Public street photography collective, and my work was featured in this year’s London Street Photography exhibition at the Museum of London.

Website:

http://www.paulrussell.info/