360 Migration
by Anthony Palmer
26 October 2023
The second in a series of podcast interviews, Anthony Palmer invites us to listen and view the work of Michael Scott in his collaborative 360 Migration Project.
Poplar High Street‘In a world seemingly overloaded with imagery and often only briefly looked at on screens before being clicked past, I wanted to create a visual essay to address what mattered deeply to me as the child of immigrants. The political narrative on migration is toxic. It pollutes our discourse with notions intended to create an unjustified hostility to migrants, who are, after all, just people like us looking for a better life for themselves and their families. In creating a deliberately slowed down video installation, I wanted the viewer to stop, look and see what was around them. How did they feel about what they see around them. How does that accord with the political narrative? The richness of our lives today is inextricably linked to the sharing of our cultural experiences and heritage. And throughout history this has always been so. There is nothing to fear from migration. When we look around ourselves, and see people who look like us and people who do not, we should feel a sense of normality, not hostility, gratitude, not fear.’
Michael Scott, photographer
Michael Scott spent many years working as a lawyer specialising in industrial, employment and discrimination law. He now spends his time taking photographs, developing his own political aesthetic to reflect his view of the world and the connections between what we see around us, and the economic and political structures which determine and rule our lives. Aside from this video, he has been working for some years on a series of portraits of people who attend protests. He focuses in on the people with their home made placards on pieces of cardboard trying to have their voices heard in a democratic society.
Station Parade, BarkingThe 360 Migration project was originally discussed at Crossing Lines, a collaborative venture with the Centre for Urban and Community Research and a satellite group of London Independent Photography. The meetings are hosted by the interviewer and photographer Anthony Palmer and take place online every first Wednesday of the month from 6-8pm. Other topics that have recently been explored include photography of architectural re-use, industrial preservation, a visual sociology of the doorbell, colonial spaces, the social memory of place and how regeneration of the city can be photographed.
Background image : Hammersmith Broadway
︎ credits : Michael Scott
If you’re interested in joining Crossing Lines please contact Anthony Palmer , or visit the Crossing Lines page on London Independent Photography
︎360Migration
