Fair shoot, she needed characters from all walks of life. “I
needed one to be the pompous gentleman or another a kid
running around begging,” she says. “I would brief them
and direct them before they’re about to go on set and then
hope that they’re living that character.”
In the Frost Fair stills, the characters appear as if a
hush has fallen over the festivities for just a moment.
That momentary suspension is a painterly technique
common to Fullerton-Batten’s work: For all the
energy and emotion her characters can convey, they’re
never speaking to each other or caught mid-gesture.
Instead, it’s the image that seems to whisper to the
viewer to stop and look. It’s a subtle but powerful
injunction in an era when pictures fly by faster and
faster. “I quite like the stillness and just feeling the
motion and still feeling the energy without people
laughing or talking,” says Fullerton-Batten. “It’s quite
hit-and-miss as well with the way they move their
mouths, and there’s something aesthetically more
beautiful when they’re generally just looking.” And
with the Frost Fair images, she says, “I wanted to cre-
ate the feeling you have when you see something for
the first time, such as a fire breather. You’re flabber-
gasted at what has happened and just stare, and at
that moment you’re actually unable to talk at all.”Fullerton-Batten also expresses a certain awe for the
city where she lives; it’s been a constant source of inspira-
tion as her career has evolved. “I’m very lucky that I live
in an amazing city like London, where I can just pop into
the National Portrait Gallery and see the Cindy Sherman
exhibition, or I can go to the Maritime Museum exhibi-
tion about the landing on the moon,” she says. “I think
that’s why I’ll never leave London. I’m just so inspired by
this city.”
Her Old Father Thames project, too, seems like
something she has no plans to leave behind. “With
many of my other projects, I felt that there was a
definite point of completion after I had shot a certain
number of images and was merely changing the loca-
tion, perhaps with another model in other clothing
and different props, and I was in danger of getting
a bit repetitive in telling the story. But with my Old
Father Thames project, I feel that each story is very
individual and interesting in its own right and deserves
to be included in the project,” says Fullerton-Batten.
“It’s been three years now since I started the project,
and there seem to be still more stories that I want to
tell. Certainly, I don't feel that I’m really ready to call it
completed just yet. Maybe it’s one of those projects that
will just go on forever.” DPPBedroom, 200934 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com