Télémaque, Nathaniel
Visual Artist, Writer and Researcher. PhD Student in Geography @ University College London
Bio
Nathaniel Télémaque is a North West London born & raised visual artist, writer & researcher who photographs and writes about ‘everyday things’ in various urban settings. Bearing witness to mad cities and maverick livelihoods inspires his visual and written practices. His lenses focus on the experiences of young Black adults, creative peers, and notions of urban change in cities. His Geography (practice-related) PhD project, Everyday Things’ is a body of creative work and research that visualises the experiences of a kinship collective of young Black adults living in White City, Shepherds Bush, West London. It is simultaneously focused on demystifying White City's utopian and imperial histories through archival encounters with the sites past representations as a utopian interwar estate and imperial exhibitions site.
Geographical location : London, UK
Research Area and Interest : experiences of young Black adults, creative peers, and notions of urban change in cities
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- Summary: ‘Everyday Things’ is a Geography (practice-related) research project that visualises the experiences of a kinship collective of young Black adults living in White City, Shepherds Bush, West London. The project combines two main methodologies. The first is an archival focused work, aimed at recovering White City’s former imperial and colonial site, the Great White City Exhibition grounds (1908) but also the site’s more recent histories as a London County Council developed inter-war estate. The second is a form of collaborative photographic research taken up with the kinship collective as well as their social peers. Depictions of young Black adult’s lives are rarely seen in British academic research. Inspired by the work of ‘everyday’ urban essays created by photographers in post-war America and the examinations of British landscapes by Black British photographers. My practice-related research facilitates site-specific dialogues, focused on contemporary and archival visualisations of White City. This body of work also engenders photographic practices capable of intervening in representations of White City, as well as West London based representations of Black life. My paper will seek to retrospectively explore the diasporic Afro-Caribbean and West African heritages shared between myself and my kinship peers living in White City and will present an Everyday Things Photobook and Postcards series, as well as their interventional politics of dissemination. In doing so this paper will visually attend to Afro-Caribbean communities in West London, whilst making links and connections to the geographies, histories and representations of the White City locale.
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