Sophie Harris-Taylor – MTWTFSS Chapter 1. 2010-2015

spreads courtesy of Sophie Harris-Taylor

MTWTFSS Chapter 1. 2010-2015 by Sophie Harris-Taylor (self published, 2016), BUY

Have you ever been stood on a platform or walking down a street and happened upon a diary or organiser on the pavement and picked it up? Suppose you open it, looking for a name or address to somehow return it and inside you find it stuffed with photographs, visual notes and mementos from parts of a life, someone else’s life, which has now, by chance, become a fleeting part of your own life.

Sophie Harris Taylor’s MTWTFSS Chapter 1. 2010-2015 accompanies a solo exhibition at Francesca Maffeo Gallery and presents us with such a snapshot or glimpse-like experience. In a raw and tender collection of images gifted to us as if in a diary, together with some handwritten notes detailing the everyday occurrences which make up a life rather than descriptions of the images, we are invited briefly into this found world.

What makes these images so powerful in this combination, is the sense of intrigue and privacy this presentation creates as it continually draws the viewer into a private world which could quite easily be their own.

Imagine we have now sat down with this diary. We don’t need to know who these people are, or where the images were made as we are encouraged to lose ourselves in the collection with them weaving together a beautiful set of optional narratives which intertwine with our own.

A diary is about the everyday and a life lived and Harris Taylor has harnessed that and taken on that power for the viewer with images that could become postcards, places to go, intimate affairs, as well as fleeting acquaintances; the familiar snapshots of a life.

Sophie Harris Taylor launches MTWTFSS Chapter 1. 2010-2015 this evening at Francesca Maffeo Gallery