Christopher TalbotArgent Groups PLC Digital Photography Placement.

Argent is one of the UK’s most respected property development companies. Founded in 1981, we have been developing well for over 27 years. We have built a strong track record in developments that combine offices, shops, hotels, cafes, restaurants, and - increasingly - other uses including residential; and have become a leading practioner of city centre regeneration.

King’s Cross Central

King’s Cross Central is the most significant development in Central London. Planning permission was granted in December 2006 and July 2008 for nealy 8 million sq ft of mixed use development.The permission includes up to 25 large, new office buildings totalling some 4.9 million sq ft; 20 new streets; 10 new major public spaces; the restoration and refurbishment of 20 historic buildings and structures, and some 2,000 homes and service appartments.

Argent Groups PLC accepted me on a six week Digital Photography Part Time Placement. Argent are a large property development company situated in the UK and have worked in London, Manchester and Birmingham. They have won international awards acclaim for their work in the UK, and have recently been granted the space to re-develop the King’s Cross area in London.

The placement involved creating a positive, vibrant, and realistic snap shot of life in the current King’s Cross area, and to build a relationship with the local community. The project was split into three areas, research, photography, and post-production.

The placement required photographs to be taken of eight key areas;

Public Space ( parks / squares )Residential ( homes / urban living )Offices Transport ( stations / cycling / taxis / buses )Sustainability ( energy )Retail ( shopping / restaurants / cafe’s / bars )Culture ( students / art galleries / public sculptures )Heritage ( buildings )

Target AudiencePrimarily potential office tenants, but also possible residential, retail, and leisure tenants or cultural in-stitutions. In general, anyone with an interest in King’s Cross - from the art student to the CEO of a blue chip company.

Creative RequirementThe final output for the project will be a set of images saved as JPG files and a short powerpoint presen-tation presenting highlights of the work. Images need to be colour corrected, formatted as low, medium, and high resolution files, and to be named and dated.

Argent offered to reimburse my travel and food funds for the days I was working for them. It worked out to be around £15 per day I worked. I met with my project Manager once a week to show progress and discuss the project in general.

I was required to cover a pretty large area, encompassing all sorts of things to photograph. My first two weeks was spent scouting the area, finding appropriate buildings to take pictures of, finding all of the build-ings on their lists and also meeting people and communicating the project. I also spent some time looking for model release forms so that I could approach people in the street with the aim of photographing them with their permission. I knew some photographs would need to be a little set up with friends being in the photographs, but they did want more of a candid style to the photographs.

The placement started on the 1st of April and lasted 6 weeks.

Context is half the work.

The concept of the term “context is half the work” relates to an idea of placing in artist in an organisa-tion that wouldn’t normally be suited to them. This then creates an interesting dynamic between the artist and the work place. It was an idea that started in the 60’s by the Artist’s Placement Group (AGP). The main intention behind the concept was to help organisations get different approaches to their work, in an attempt to help them grow. This also helped unemployed artists branch out as it brought work to them, and in a new light.

Argent have two photographers already bankrolled at the company, and have had experience with part time placement student photographers before. This was a somewhat scary, yet exciting process all at the same time. I had never been demanded of so much for my photography so it was a stimulating ex-perience. Argent are a dedicated company and they are very strict over deadlines and time scale. During week 2-4 I had a lot of University deadlines that crept up, and Argent became a second priority which was a problem at first. After the deadlines had passed and I presented my images for the first 4 weeks they were pleased with the progress I had made.

Argent are a dedicated company that excel in what they do. They are incredibly organised and effe-cient and thankfully I believe my images succedded in promoting a positive life style in King’s Cross. Speaking to locals in the area, they were excited by Argents ideas in bringing new life to the place. A lot of people felt there wasn’t a lot of positive to be said about the area, but this was a slowly chang-ing thought due to Argent. As it actually stands, the area does feel a little dull and run down, and I of-ten heard and saw Ambulances and Police Cars when I was there taking pictures. This will hopefully change with the introduction of the new development by 2012.

To apply for the placement, I sent my photographic C.V to Rachele from Argent, which had a link to my website. Here is all correspondance to the project beginnings.

C.V.

Website

Positive Portrait of King’s Cross. The Photographs.

Social Media. Twitter.

As a creative tool, we used the website Twitter to update fellow students and our tutor on our work in progress. We used the hash tag of pha09 so we could later search our tweets to find and use in our online book for issuu.com

What follows are some of the tweets, and some of the twitpic postings I used in the duration of the project.