ROYAL GArden kensington
Duncan called me up as he usually does and said that the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington were interested in refreshing some of his photography which was hanging in their Piano bar - he asked if I could help. I went to take a look and could see that it was a bit of a mish-mash of framing styles - some had mounts, some didn’t - some had signatures and some didn’t. There was room for improvement.
The F&B director explained to me over a coffee the deep musical heritage of the hotel - even showing me a coffee table book created to commemorate all the world famous musical acts that had stayed at the hotel, in part due to its proximity to the Royal Albert Hall where a lot of them had been booked to play.
I’ve been a big fan of not just Duncan’s photography but his unique approach since I met him 6 years ago. There’s something perfectly imperfect about his work which (for me) makes it a lot more interesting to look at than other more polished celebrity photography. I’d worked with Duncan previously, helping refine his framing style and suggesting how I would present the prints, and how to inject his infectious personality into them.
I figured there was a bigger opportunity here than just refreshing a couple of frames - and with the right collection of photos and perhaps a new take on Duncan’s work, we could create something worth travelling across town to come and look at.
After a few revisions I landed on presenting his work as an oversized film slide, with the film sprockets cut out to add some theatre - it’s easy to forget, with how easy modern day photography is, how much of the analogue photography art has been lost since these pictures were taken. I played with acrylic to mimic actual film, but felt it lacked some of the fine art presence that a high quality archival paper has. I knew I wanted plenty of ‘Duncan’ in these pieces too - so the titles are all his handwriting, any other font was just too sterile. Though initially sceptical - Duncan signed off on my vision.
It was around this time that Duncan called again - this time to tell me that Hahnemühle were interested in collaborating with us on this project and sponsoring the paper for the pieces going up - I couldn’t arrange the Zoom meeting quick enough. Hahnemühle were great to work with, they consulted on which of their new papers they felt would be the best fit, and sent samples to the studio to review. I asked master printer Gareth Soper at Arteum what he thought:
“The Hahnemühle Agave paper has great density meaning the blacks print well in the paper giving us the true black we want for this photography. It has a luxury feel whilst being sustainable compared to most other papers which helps. Not having any OBA (optical brightening agents) means we can be confident these are going to last.”
With everything decided on, we put the pieces into production - they’ve now been hung. The rest of the story, you’ll have to wait for…