Project: Greasy Spoon

Greasy Spoon is a project I've just started working on with Urbis - www.urbis.org.uk and Lorraine Shaw - www.shaw-photography.co.uk & www.shaw-photography.us

Lorraine Shaw is a photographer who has worked in California and Los Angeles for 22 years before moving back to Manchester. She studied photography at the renowned Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California where she was placed on the Dean’s honors list and exhibited many times in the prestigious student gallery before graduating with a BFA honors degree in Photography and Imaging. After a successful career in the television industry - working on hit TV shows for major production companies, and as a Studio manager, she dedicated herself several years ago, to a full time career in photography. Lorraine is a commercial and fine art photographer specializing in food, still life, lifestyle and portraiture. One of the winners in Photo District News’ Annual Photography Competition, New York, in 2005, signed by Getty Images, and regular contributor to Violet Magazine and other publications in the US, Lorraine has worked with top photographers as well as on her own commercial and personal projects.

Together we have been asked by Urbis to shoot and manage a project with the working title 'Greasy Spoon's' in Manchester. Using the book 'Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans: 50 Great Cafes and the Stuff That Makes Them Great' by Russell Davis as a starting point for reference and inspiration for the work.

The work will be displayed on the ground floor of Urbis, in the corridor gallery and it is my first proper commissioned work.

This is still a project very much at the ideas stage, with the hope of shooting to begin at the mid-march.

Ideas at the moment include:

• Working with the Manchester Evening News to create a top ten of Manchester greasy spoons and cafes
• Taking portrait shots of the owners and customers that frequent the cafes
• Creating a photographic installation of a Greasy Spoon in the Corridor Gallery itself

I'd like to keep the project quite kitch because of the way greasy spoons are such a quintessential part of British culture and have been for a long time. Be that 'proper' working class greasy spoons or the now more trendy cafe-bar greasy spoons - like those seen in Manchester's Northern Quarter and London's Carnaby Street.