Grant Hodgeon

Born and raised in Lancashire, UK – Grant Hodgeon images capture the illusive moment between moments. His work has been been featured in the Lancashire Evening Post as well as shown in galleries from Preston to London. Grant is currently working full time with photographer Jeff Sciortino in Chicago, IL. The images and text below are part of a book titled Available Allan he made to document the life of his grandfather.

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We currently live in a time so bombarded with visual stimulation that we find it near impossible to imagine existing in an era where images were not on every bus stand, in every newspaper or on every street corner. We are so overwhelmed by these images that we no longer have the ability to consciously acknowledge them all. Despite this, there are certain artifacts that we hold much closer to our hearts, photographs that to any other person are meaningless and disconnected. These are the ones we take ourselves. The ones we have taken of us. The family of which we are a part of.

This book initially existed to compile and document the life of my grandfather – though the harder I looked, the less I found. It occurred to me that my grandfathers’ generation is the last to have a scattered and undocumented upbringing. Todays children are seen through the eyes of mobile phones and digital cameras. Immortalised in bytes that don’t deteriorate over time. Pictures that are published across the internet and consequently across the world to family, friends and strangers alike. We now live in a time so enriched with images of the past that the underlying idea of history being written by the successor seems to be questioned. His story now appears to be Our story.

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My primary aims were to chronologise his life – A full, detailed compilation – though it seems to have devolved into something much less structured. The burdening sense of fragmented memories seemed to dominate my journey and it was as if the more I learnt the less I found to help support these memories. The docking cranes that once were an integral part of my grandfathers life are now nothing more than a memory supported by a couple of photographs and a current piece of land that has been re- appropriated into a shopping and leisure area.

How is it possible for me to compress 68 years of life into a book that I could honestly admit to being detailed and exhaustive? I couldn’t.

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The only way in which I felt I could make this book was to further the notion of the fragmented and deteriorated. I wanted to collect an array of artifacts both old and new and arrange them in a narrative that told a story of a life in simple, non-linear successions. Quotes relating to geographical locations and nondescript annotations relating to old photographs. My aim is to persuade the viewer to produce a personal sense of understanding of my grandfather. I’d like the viewer to fill in the gaps intentionally left out in hope that it induces a compassionate appreciation of a human being they have no direct relation to.

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The only way in which I felt I could make this book was to further the notion of the fragmented and deteriorated. I wanted to collect an array of artifacts both old and new and arrange them in a narrative that told a story of a life in simple, non-linear successions. Quotes relating to geographical locations and nondescript annotations relating to old photographs. My aim is to persuade the viewer to produce a personal sense of understanding of my grandfather. I’d like the viewer to fill in the gaps intentionally left out in hope that it induces a compassionate appreciation of a human being they have no direct relation to.

The life of my grandfather was well photographed and documented roughly from the moment he met my grandmother. It seemed as if the lack of photographic evidence from his earlier years was something I could go back and fill in with a current look at the locations that meant something to him. In doing this I discovered the vernacular of my grandfathers era was no longer.

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The places and stories that constructed a large part of his life no longer existed. Mere traces of them remained. It was these traces that I felt should be captured, before they too disappeared.

My grandfather has been an inspiration to me throughout the making of this book. He has enlightened me to appreciate and exercise patience, dedication and love. Without him I would not have understood the importance of perseverance and heart. This book is dedicated to him.

– Grant Hodgeon

See more of his work at www.photogrant.com