Tony sleep explores the idea of identity and the importance of community in his works ‘Welcome to Frestonia’ that visually depicts citizens who had created their own state, independent from the United Kingdom. The images represent the importance of community and tradition that is part of this. The work includes people undertaking everyday activities during the 1970’s and documents this extensively.
The result of this work has since raised questions around the relationship between the subject, photographer and viewer as the images have been heavily plagiarised, questioning authorship and the use of the images. Sadly this has led to the removal of the work online and Tony sleep addresses themes of trust between the photographer and viewer in his statement:
“This particular set of photographs relied on trust. The people who appear in them were open enough to trust me to photograph their lives. Unfortunately, visitors far too often cared nothing for any of of that.”
capsule-blog.com 