Peter Basden

A Glancing Blow - From the Streets of the Medway Towns | A series of black and white photographs from the streets of the Medway towns. All of the images are from a project that I have been working on for around the last five years or so.

The work reveals a glimpse into the coarse underbelly of British society, highlighting little moments of unseen drama, flickers of humour and an eclectic mix of characters from a library of fleeting interactions caught on film. The photographs come from a dubious period of time in the United Kingdom, with a standing national divide over Brexit, widespread political turmoil and an unprecedented global pandemic looming in the background, optimism feels sparse.

As a collective, the work forms a dissection of uncontrolled, unposed life in Britain, presented through a plethora of snapshots and glancing blows.

 For those unfamiliar with the Medway towns, the area is a conurbationin the region of South East England, in the United Kingdom. The towns surround the the mouth of the River Medway just before it empties into the Thames Estuary. Considered by some to be a deprived area in the garden of England, it sits just thirty miles away from the capital, sandwiched between London and some of Kent’s many famous coastal towns. The area celebrates its heritage through the naval dockyard in Chatham and as the historical home of Charles Dickens.

From the opposing ends of a single mile stretched between the towns of Rochester and Chatham, an interesting juxtaposition can be observed, with a medieval castle and a gothic cathedral partnered with quaint Dickensian themed boutiques at one end in Rochester, to the deteriorating remains of a once vibrant high street, now littered with boarded up shops and a sense of desperation in the contrasting area of Chatham.

I’m often very sentimental and nostalgic about Medway as it was the place where I was born and raised. In some ways, my work from this series is the result of me reevaluating the area as an adult. www.peterbasden.com