Exploring ‘Woman In Cheshire Street’: A Mixed Media Collage
This layered photomontage or mixed-media collage combines photography, cartographic fragments, and painterly interventions.
On the left side, I wanted to create imagery that suggested waves and the sea. Embedded within this are fragments of maps — suggesting geography, travel and memory.
The fragmented maps and fluid forms on one side deliberately contrast with the solitary human presence on the other. The figure’s obscured features and luminous outline imply both anonymity and universality—representing a displaced person, or an individual caught between territories. The red enclosure is there to symbolize confinement, while the blue map-space suggests the broader world beyond which she may or not have been part of. Who knows? For me the one certainty I have about this woman is that she’s a majestic figure that stands out against everyone else in the Sunday morning market next to Brick Lane.
I photographed her in Cheshere Street East London in 1982. I’ve always regarded my 35mm negatives as precious and this image, this woman (now long dead) is precious to me. I’ve often wondered if life had been good to her; where had she been in her life?
Her figure is a negative with glowing white and dark tones that obscure facial detail to emphasize the mystery of her life.
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