Museum of
Making Derby
16 March - 24 September 2023
Museum of Making
Silk Mill Lane
Derby DE1 3AF
A Perfect Sentence
Oliver Frank Chanarin
Museum of Making, Derby
FORMAT23
A selection of photographs from A Perfect Sentence premiered at The Museum of Making, Derby on 16 March - 3 September 2023, as part of FORMAT23, the UKs leading international photography biennial. Chanarin’s narrative-driven artist texts accompanied the photographic installation - poetic prose that fuses fact, fiction and recollection.
Janine Derbyshire, Head of Visitor Experience, Derby Museums Trust:
Working in partnership with QUAD, FORMAT23 and Forma on the production has enabled ourselves and the artist Oliver Frank Chanarin to collaborate with communities across our city through photographic encounters. Still evolving until the moment the work reaches the walls of the gallery, boundaries of portraiture, community and curatorship will continue to be pushed to new levels which is a very ambitious and exciting process to be a part of.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view: The Museum of Making, Derby, part of FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Photo: Emily Jones
A Perfect Sentence evolved during a peculiar and unsettling time, when Brexit polarised the nation, Covid-19 forced people into isolation and the public’s consciousness of identity politics heightened. This juncture coincided with the disbanding of Chanarin’s artistic partnership - the internationally acclaimed duo Broomberg & Chanarin - whose collaboration came to an end after working together for over twenty years. In response to these events, Chanarin took a cue from August Sander’s collective portrait of German society, People of the 20th Century (1927-64) and turned to the vernacular of documentary photography.
Chanarin recalls:
I wasn’t sure how to be a photographer anymore; how to take pictures in this new paradigm; how to approach people in the street, in their homes, in their communities; and what is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I felt unmoored, like a planet that had lost its moon, and I knew the answer was to go back to the impulse that drew me to photography in the first place. Encounters with strangers; the beautiful accidental moments that come with getting lost in the world with a camera.
A Perfect Sentence is shaped by many spoken and unspoken exchanges. I’ve tried to make these encounters healthy and inspiring but the ‘perfect’ here is aspirational because every human interaction is fraught, especially when a camera is involved. In the making I got to be fearless, to seek out one good image in a fog of ten bad ones. They unfold according to my own invisible and intuitive syntax. This is a document of the real, yet a shadow of disbelief binds everything.
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Images: Oliver Frank Chanarin, A Perfect Sentence, 2023. © Oliver Frank Chanarin. Installation view & FORMAT23 International Photography Festival, 2023. Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
16 March - 24 September 2023
Museum of Making
Silk Mill Lane
Derby DE1 3AF