Reviewed by Anneka French
The pedestrian route from Coventry train station to the city centre is a well-travelled one, taking in a mixture of modern offices, the notorious ring road, dusty sites of demolition, a small park, a line of estate agents, and for the month of October only, a row of bold photographic portraits mounted on placards. This is Agency, a project by Anthony Luvera, a photographer who was been working with socially engaged methodologies for twenty years. Agency builds upon Luvera’s deep engagement with homelessness in particular and follows on from recent projects such as Frequently Asked Questions (2020), a research-led series of provocations contributing to expanded conversations on the subject developed in collaboration with Gerald Mclaverty who has first-hand experience of homelessness.
It is significant that Agency has been co-created with each individual depicted. All have been homeless in Coventry. Luvera has spent months building dialogue and mutual trust, listening and learning about their lives, developing a weekly forum for discussion and action, and teaching each person skills with photographic equipment. Indeed, in these images, in what Luvera describes as ‘assisted self-portraits’, a shutter release cable is visible in their hands. Another detail of note is the striking ways in which the subjects look out at the camera, asking the audience to return their gazes rather than look away. Imitating displays more commonly associated with advertising, protest or political campaigning, the photographs demand to be looked at and listened to; they demand agency.
Take Mick Bickley, for instance. His bittersweet portrait is taken in front of his childhood home complete with privet hedge, pebble dash and weeds. Silvered sunglasses hang on a chain around his neck. Bickley shapes his own story, his own presentation, chooses his own final photograph and is a person first and foremost. Bernie Howarth, meanwhile, wearing acid-wash denim shorts and a yellow hoodie stands against a timber-framed wall in Medieval Spon Street, a place where buildings were dismantled and pieced back together again following the Blitz. Howarth holds her hand lightly over her stomach to take a breath, as if she is about to speak or to sing. It is the humanity of homelessness that is so often forgotten.
Agency is supported by GRAIN Projects, Coventry University and Crisis, and forms part of the programming of Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. A free publication with further images from Agency can be collected from various sites in Coventry and these are presented at a time when community and care are very much foregrounded within the city. The Turner Prize 2021 exhibition, a short walk away, is comprised exclusively of collaborative collectives and there is plenty of other community-oriented and co-created activity centred in Coventry at present. Though these are portraits of individuals, Agency is also a portrait of the city, albeit something which is usually kept hidden.
Luvera has previously described homeless people as some of the most marginalised in society, and while much of the city’s activity unfolds and its legacies are as yet unclear, Agency provides insight and visibility. These are important contributing factors in affecting change.
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Anthony Luvera: Agency continues in Warwick Row, Coventry, CV1 1EX, through October 28, 2021.
For further viewing: Anthony Luvera Coventry City of Culture 2021
Reviewed for Photomonitor by Anneka French
