Frome, a market town in Somerset in the west of England, has always had a thriving, diverse community and a backbone of various successful industries in its past, but having had a bit of a renaissance in the past ten years or so, the town has seen an influx of people moving to the area to enjoy a more gentle, interesting and varied way of life.
In an attempt to learn more about the town’s inhabitants, its histories and the wide array of creative and intriguing people living and working in the town, I set about researching and contacting people and asking them if I could meet them, hear about their craft or practice and document what they were doing on a day to day basis. The idea was to showcase a window into their world and to create a small collection of images which would then use as a new project and which I’d give to them at the end, to use however they liked.
In a town rich in historical trades, it felt right that if I was asking something of people; to open their doors to me, for their time and their anecdotes, as a total stranger, then at the simplest level it made sense to me to give them free access to the images – a modern way of trading time and knowledge for goods, if you like.
And love the simplicity of it!
Within this introductory collection of images there is an oil painter, a leather worker, a double-bass luthier, a clothes designer, an egg farmer, a wood carver, a bicycle manufacturing school, a thatcher, a linocut printmaker, a professional boxer, a specialist coffee shop, a baker, a carpenter and joiner, a cinematographer, a potter, a gym owner and weight lifter and a glass artist – so as you’ll see, an extremely diverse collection of people and crafts, and this is just scratching the surface!