Sharon O'Neill
Flats
My photographic practice draws from the sphere of social documentary photography and concentrates primarily on people and places that from the outside seem unexceptional and, by the very nature of their everyday-ness, are overlooked.
Through photography I explore the ordinary, observing the fabric and details of a place or community. An important component of my work is the use of archival and reference material, both personal and historical – to build a portrait of the lives I am focused on.
Flats centres on a council housing block constructed in 1956 as part of the massive post-war house-building programme, designed by Sir Leslie Martin, principal architect of The Royal Festival Hall. Drawing upon archival material from a book Martin wrote in 1939 titled The Flat Book, the work explores photographically the idealistic vision of the young architect, using the building and the current inhabitants of the block to illustrate the ideas of his ‘modern world’ today, in essence the realised future of his 1939 vision.