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reviews and press for the Derby Detective Agency
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Favourites from Format Festival
"One of my highlights from the work on show at the festival was a commission by photographer Graeme Vaughan, who produced an installation piece The Derby Detective Agency, in which he traced the streets of Derby, following cold cases from the local news through investigative street photo documentation. Graeme tracks the city through small details, using local news as a framework to discover the city for himself, through the edges, the pavements, the surfaces. By allowing himself to 'play detective' his role as a street photographer no longer involves searching for the spectacle of the 'decisive moment', but searching for the surfaces and stages within the city upon which scenes may or may not have played out. The piece was wonderfully playful; drawing attention to the 'uses' of street photography, and the images themselves became both peripheral and integral to the work."
Emily Graham
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Source: the photographic review [spring 2011 issue 66]
"The International Street" p57
"As is appropriate for a festival titled Format, the Quad show offers a range of formats. The most individual one is the office set aside as 'The Derby Detective Agency' for the resident photographer Graeme Vaughan. Installed as if its occupant has just gone out on a case, a battered typewriter on the desk, copies of the local newspaper piled on the floor, steam radio on the back shelf, cameras scattered around, a pin-marked wall map indicating sites where various displayed photographs were taken, it reminds the viewer of Walter Benjamin's insight that certain street photographs resemble crime scenes...."
Mick Gidley
link to source magazine
Derby Telegraph [March 21 2011]
Pictures tell the story at city's No1 artistic detective agency
Nigel Powlson
download Derby Telegraph article
reviews and press for the Derby Detective Agency
Contact Editions Blog
Favourites from Format Festival
"One of my highlights from the work on show at the festival was a commission by photographer Graeme Vaughan, who produced an installation piece The Derby Detective Agency, in which he traced the streets of Derby, following cold cases from the local news through investigative street photo documentation. Graeme tracks the city through small details, using local news as a framework to discover the city for himself, through the edges, the pavements, the surfaces. By allowing himself to 'play detective' his role as a street photographer no longer involves searching for the spectacle of the 'decisive moment', but searching for the surfaces and stages within the city upon which scenes may or may not have played out. The piece was wonderfully playful; drawing attention to the 'uses' of street photography, and the images themselves became both peripheral and integral to the work."
Emily Graham
link to contact editions blog
Source: the photographic review [spring 2011 issue 66]
"The International Street" p57
"As is appropriate for a festival titled Format, the Quad show offers a range of formats. The most individual one is the office set aside as 'The Derby Detective Agency' for the resident photographer Graeme Vaughan. Installed as if its occupant has just gone out on a case, a battered typewriter on the desk, copies of the local newspaper piled on the floor, steam radio on the back shelf, cameras scattered around, a pin-marked wall map indicating sites where various displayed photographs were taken, it reminds the viewer of Walter Benjamin's insight that certain street photographs resemble crime scenes...."
Mick Gidley
link to source magazine
Derby Telegraph [March 21 2011]
Pictures tell the story at city's No1 artistic detective agency
Nigel Powlson
download Derby Telegraph article