I had a tremendous piece of news yesterday – some of my images have been chosen for exhibition at a local Art Gallery. Here’s the story …

Background

Multistory are an organisation based in Sandwell – where I’m studying. They work with the people of that borough to “make art that reflects their lives”, commissioning artists to help that happen.

One of their projects is called “Black Country Stories”, where photographers (including Martin Parr of the Magnum Agency) document the lives of people in the area.

The latest phase of Black Country Stories involves another Magnum artist – Mark Power.

The photography students at Sandwell and Walsall colleges were given an opportunity to run their own take on his theme, and some selected student images would be exhibited alongside the main exhibition.

And ?

I’d had a project in mind I’d given the working title of “Sunday Best”, documenting the diversity of clothes that Christians wear to worship on a Sunday.

Sandwell is culturally very diverse, and so is its Christian community. I wanted to record, explore and document that diversity.

Unfortunately (for one reason or another), I only had chance to get to one church before the submissions deadline, so it wasn’t as diverse as I’d hoped. But I will be following up on it.

Now, documentary photography isn’t really my strong suit – there are other’s on my course who are much better at it. So I was surprised to be even shortlisted.

And then I found out that three of my photos have been selected – along with my friends Khuram Choudri, H. Walters and Jas Singh.

We’re all so excited about this (I haven’t stopped grinning yet), and I’ll let you know more as soon as I know anything. The show opens on July 20th, 2012 at the New Art Gallery in Walsall.

I’ll be putting the images online at some stage, but don’t want to spoil the show …