Artist Statement

Shelf Life was shot in Newport, South Wales, a town founded on coal, iron and steel, which Stephens identifies as a microcosm of post-industrial Britain. The fall-out from successive economic failure, he says, can be felt all around the city. It is never more evident than in the city centre, he says where “cut-price stores compete with one another to encourage big spenders on small budgets to Spend, Spend, Spend!”

This work documents the everyday engagement of the citizen with the consumer environment. Stephens sees the experience as at once harsh, raw and brutal, as the consumer is bombarded with a plethora of bewildering promises. Yet at the same time, he says, these “shrines to abundance are full of drama, energy and life. The tension that is felt in this exchange is palpable and my intention is to both celebrate and wonder at it.”

Artist Bio

Laurence Stephens recently graduated as a student of Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport.

His photographic interests are located in contemporary social issues that affect people living in the UK. At the centre of his practice is the desire to elicit poetic meaning in the image of an otherwise mundane event. For Stephens, “it is in everyday and ordinary events that the unseen or overlooked can show us how we are."