talking pink
A collaboration with the photographer Paul Rogers. I sought to interact with the photography, providing a contrasting emphasis and vitality to the exhibition in its enquiry around the subject. The stories, collected from children and their families, are explored, with their words making the colour exist on an invisible space. Dialogue is a contraction from the Greek words for 'through' and 'words'. Today children catalogue and categorise the everyday through a visual frame. Emojis and 'likes' replace the human response; what is read frequently loses necessary intonation but what is spoken can be passed down through generations. Scientist David Bohm considers dialogue as a kind of creative catalyst for a group, so this project TALKING PINK aims to trigger an intergenerational discourse on what the colour pink means to them and their families. As children's author Lois Lowry said, ‘memories need to be shared’.
The photographic images are collected 'street photography' and complement and balance Alison's eclectic, investigative approach to the colour pink. A.C. Grayling says, 'the history of collecting illuminates something striking: the human mind's unquenchable curiosity, and its love for the wonder of the world' - in this case PINK. The 'images' are what most street photography is about: collecting, creating or snapping the strange and mundane; questioning and encouraging thinking about things we didn't know or hadn't seriously thought about. This is all put into perspective with Magidson's song lyrics - 'Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink' and Elizabeth Taylor's iconic observation about 'falling off my pink cloud with a thud'.
The exhibition has now been immortalised in a book Talking Pink
Pink Noise!
Inspired by the Pyramid Open Show call out I collaborated with my daughter to narrate the dialogue from the Talking Pink exhibtion over her collection of pink paraphanallia