"Fantastical" photographs in Hastings exhibition

Paul Watson is exhibiting a selection of his fantastical photographs upstairs at 1200 Postcards on Queens Road in Hastings from August 1–24.

Transcript

00:00Good morning. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspaper. It's lovely

00:05to meet and to speak to Paul Watson this morning. Now, Paul, you've got a fabulous sounding

00:10exhibition. In fact, I should say a fantastical exhibition in Hastings at 1200 Postcards,

00:16August 1st to the 24th. Fantastical photographs. Explain that. What are you doing in this exhibition?

00:25Okay, so I've been working on this series for several years now called Acid Renaissance.

00:32And it's a mixture of photography, drawing and printmaking. So the exhibition at 1200 Postcards

00:39is purely the photography side of it. And it's all these fantastical characters drawn from myth and

00:47folklore. We have a very sort of dark and brooding look about the photographs. And so it's a

00:55selection of these photographs that are on exhibition.

00:58How do you create the photographs in the first place? Is this digital manipulation? Or do you

01:03set something up? What do you do?

01:04No, it's all very much analogue. I use a digital camera, but there's no post-processing,

01:11no photoshopping. I create the masks that they wear. And they wear them and I have props and various

01:22things. And then set up the lighting correctly. So there's no digital trickery going on.

01:28It's proper painstaking magic.

01:32Most of the work is in the weeks leading up to the photograph, creating all of the

01:38the costume and the props and everything.

01:40It sounds great. And you fairly recently moved to Hastings, haven't you, from Brighton?

01:44Yeah, so I've been here just about a year now. And I've been really pleasantly surprised by how

01:50creative Hastings is. It has a great creative community. Lots of little exhibitions on.

01:57It's a genuinely interesting place, isn't it?

01:59Yeah, very much so. Yes.

02:01And what are you hoping for from this exhibition?

02:03Well, I hope to sort of do my bit towards the creativity that's inherent in Hastings and

02:16get my work shown and seen. That would be great. And it feels like the first step to becoming

02:24a known artist in Hastings.

02:26Absolutely. And as we're speaking, it's not quite opened yet, but very soon.

02:30Yes. You must have a good feeling about this.

02:34Yes, I do. It's going to open on Friday, the 1st of August at 6pm to 8pm for a special opening

02:40event. Everyone is welcome. But then it's on to the 24th of August, if you can't make that.

02:46I'm hoping I've got various people coming down. So it should be quite an interesting event.

02:51Fantastic. And ideally, presumably the first of many in Hastings.

02:57Yes, hopefully, yes.

02:58Fantastic. Well, good luck with it. Lovely to meet you.

03:01Thank you very much.

03:02Thank you, Paul.