Glimpses of Life with Photographer Nick JS Thompson
Nick JS Thompson is a London-based photographer whose work documents society and the marks left behind on the environment. Shooting both interiors and exteriors, his work is a record of the lives of the absent inhabitants of the spaces. His exploration of this theme has reached its most poignant and personal in his most current series Relics, which documents the interior of his grandparents home after they had left, due to death and relocation.
After the death of his grandfather, his grandmother was moved into a care home. Nick then had 24 hours to document the trappings of their home before it was packed up and shipped out. The house is empty and yet the presence of the absent inhabitants still pervades the house, the images are shot through with their personalities, and they can be seen in their belongings. Each photograph is shot in black and white, lacking any warmth.
As well as presenting the images and the accompanying photobook, Nick is including some of the actual relics he salvaged from their house - each chosen for their sentimental value.
Being outsiders to this scene, upon encountering the works the viewer unavoidably makes assumptions upon the character and personality of these two unknown people. In this way, they are defined by the relics they have left behind.
Why did you feel the need to document your grandparents house?
At first I didn’t think about doing it. My family asked me to go to the house to see whether there was anything of my grandfather's that I wanted to keep. I let myself into the house and was hit by this wave of emotion. It was a very surreal experience. Any other time I would have been there, my granddad would have greeted me with a huge hug and a cup of tea. There was none of that this time. The emptiness of the house just brought home his death. I wanted to try and rationalise this in some way, and these photos were my way of doing that.
What happened to their possessions after the house was sold?
My relatives kept items that they wanted or that had particular sentimental value to them. I kept a large amount too, some of which will be in this exhibition, with the rest still in boxes waiting to be sorted through. The remaining possessions were given to house clearance for Age Concern before the house itself was sold.
Do you think these photos will resonate with the public or is this more of a personal project?
I thought about this a lot when putting the project together and I hope it will resonate with people who have experienced the death of a family member. I think that it is quite a universal experience that everyone can draw similarities to their own experiences from. A lot of the objects or scenes portrayed in the work are common for people from that generation and in that way it also makes it relatable. I’ve shown the work to people and they have said, “my grandparents had those same net curtains or kitchen utensils or whatever it is”, again this helps to enable the work to span the gap between a personal experience and a universal one.
Has the process been difficult or did you find it cathartic?
Both. It has surprised me, the order in which it has happened. At first it was cathartic to document all these things and produce the work but afterwards it became more difficult to reflect on it and think about what it means to me as a body of work and how this relates to my memories.
I thought it would be the other way around but I suppose that is a natural reaction to loss and death, in that it takes a while to sink in.
Has your family seen the photos and what do they think about you doing this project?
Yeah, a lot of my family have seen the work. All of the feedback so far has been really positive.
This is the only one of your shows to focus on a private interior rather than a public space. How do you think this relates to your previous work?
It is different to my previous work in its portrayal of smaller, more intimate spaces and situations. All my work, however, deals with space and its relationship to the people who inhabit or affect and change it in some way, so I think that the new work still follows this same narrative.
The effect of the people who define the space that they live in, leaving that space is apparent in Relics. This was also true of my last two bodies of work, “Fanø” and “The Decline of Conscience” where large-scale monuments and housing were shown, and had had the human element removed. I think that the main thing that has changed for this most recent work is the scale of it.
The vast majority of people who see this work won't have known your grandparents, and will therefore be making assumptions about your relatives based on what they have left behind. How does this make you feel?
At the moment it is hard for me to say how it feels. The only people to have seen the work so far have been family and close friends who know me (and in some cases my grandparents) and so reactions and comments are in a personal context.
When the work is released into the public domain all this changes but as a lot of the images portray items that are quite ubiquitous in homes of people in that generation I think people can relate to that.
Relics opens on Thursday the 4th of August at 6pm.
The show then runs until Sunday the 7th, at BSMT Space in Dalston.
5D Stoke Newington Road N168BH
