Paul Gray
.jpg "Floodlight, 2005")
These photographs are from the project 'All for One', which was the culmination of a year-long residency in 2004 to 2005 at Tynecastle Football Stadium, home to Heart of Midlothian Football Club. The resulting series of photographs and video works were exhibited at the Stills Gallery in Edinburgh in 2005 along with an accompanying book of the photographs.
The remit of the residency was to produce a body of work that reflected the emotion and passion of a sporting event as experienced by fans and players alike, while also documenting the physicality of the ground. The works focused on the feeling of anticipation that exists in the stadium while it lays dormant between events and explored notions of duality, including the home and away fans and players, the two halves of the pitch, the old and the new, the public and private spaces within the stadium and how the aging Main Stand struggles to meet with modern requirements.
The exhibited images were taken during an evening game and hint at the highly charged atmosphere within the hidden football ground, in contrast with the deserted surroundings that land lock this compact city stadium.
Paul Gray is a photographer and film maker who lives and works in Edinburgh. He combines his photographic, film directing and video art practices with lecturing in photography and film at Edinburgh Napier University.
www.paul.uk.net