The Shot I Never Forgot
‘The Shot I Never Forgot’ is an Arts Council funded project in which participating artists were invited to share a photograph that has remained in their mind since they shot it along with the story behind its creation. Most of the artists instinctively knew which image they should share, sometimes because it was poignant, sometimes because of its personal significance or simply because it is a great photograph.
As photographers, we shoot many more images than ever see the light of day, often including fabulous stand alone pictures – shot on instinct – whilst making work for another project. Because these single images do not fit the brief, they sit gathering dust in an ever-growing archive. The Shot I Never Forgot is a chance for some of these images to be presented in their own right, for others to enjoy; a platform to enable some of these memorable photographs to be seen for the first time.
This project began in February 2013 and culminated in an exhibition and publication, held during the Brighton photo Fringe 2014. Since then, it has been lying dormant, ocassionally being dusted off to receive some new submissions!
John House, February 2018
Mark Power
‘Rufford Colliery, Mansfield. 1992’ This picture is from a series made in 1992 called The Dignity of Labour, for which I photographed some of the more ‘challenging’ professions in Britain. I’d always wanted to visit a working coal mine and this was probably my last chance; Rufford Colliery, situated about five miles northeast of Mansfield, was one of the last surviving pits in Nottinghamshire, not to mention Britain. The men knew their mining days were numbered, and there was much anger and disappointment in the rank-smelling air at the coalface. In the preceding weeks I’d been reading the complete works of D. H. Lawrence and my mind was full of the romance of it all. But my day at Rufford Colliery put paid to that; this was a tough job, probably the toughest of all those I photographed throughout the project. That said, only last week I met a man in Stoke-on-Trent who had spend thirty years as a miner, before losing his job in 1991. Without hesitation he declared he’d go back tomorrow, if only he could. Coincidentally, a few days before, in the same city, I chanced upon this poignant quote from John D Rockefeller, engraved into a modest monument to (former) Stoke steelworkers: “I believe in the Dignity of Labour, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living”.
