Chris Harrison's 'Copper Horses' exhibition was a nostalgic journey spanning his fathers working career. What was so poignant about the exhibition was not the separate images themselves rather the personal stories that were told. Talking about his work, Harrison expressed a desire to "instill a feeling of pride in the skill and creativity of ordinary people and what they do for a living." Whether this was achieved or not is questionable but he certainly succeeded in drawing the viewers to his father, perhaps more through the pencil anecdotes attached to his photographs, rather than the focus of the images themselves.
When viewing the exhibition, I couldn't help but feel a sense of loss that the industries that built strong, hard working communities together are no longer here. Instead, we are living in a country that has abandoned primary industries to develop more financially rewarding quaternary, specialist industries, while a large percentage of the population remain unemployed and on benefits. What Harrison manages to achieve through this exhibition is getting ordinary people to question and compare the direction that our country and industries are heading. Particularly through the exhibition being in Bradford, it hit a strong note. Bradford once a driving force in the industrial revolution, playing a huge part in the textile industry, has disintegrated like most other post-industrial areas of the north into social unrest and economic deprivation.While Harrison was merely taking a personal journey into the life of his father, the overall questions raised about post-industrialised society were more important to me as a viewer, which I view as a success on his part; creating a real sense of joy, nostalgia and community looking back into the lost industrialised past of our country.
http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/CopperHorses/About.aspx
