I take photographs because I can’t not.
Photography isn’t really a hobby for me. It’s something I fell into without deciding to.
I just started taking pictures.
I didn’t realise I’d started until I realised I couldn’t stop.
I tried, once. Then lockdown happened and I threw myself into it completely.
Partly because I’d found somewhere comfortable.
Mainly because people responded to it.
People saw something in the work that I couldn’t see myself.
They encouraged me. They believed in me.
It’s one of the only compliments I’ve ever really known how to accept.
I don’t think I have a talent.
I think I have an obsession.
Photography has given me purpose, community and a future.
It’s given me somewhere to belong.
I genuinely believe anybody can do this.
I want people to. A creative outlet can change your life.
I don’t see these photographs as straightforward images of places.
They’re traces. Evidence that something happened, is happening, or has just passed through.
Small interruptions in the surface of everyday life.
I notice things.
Objects left behind. Colours that don’t belong. Temporary markings. Strange balances.
Small moments most people walk past.
I walk around Leicester and sometimes I see America.
Sometimes I see Asia.
Sometimes I see places that feel completely out of this world.
Ordinary places don’t stay ordinary for long if you look at them differently.
Growing up in Highfields, I was lucky.
There were murals everywhere.
My walk into town passed the old City Gallery.
My mum loved art and photography.
Cameras in toy boxes. Exhibitions to visit. A neighbour with a darkroom.
Outside of home and school, there was Highfields Adventure Playground.
It felt completely feral in the best possible way.
Dangerous-looking equipment that wouldn’t survive five minutes now.
A rooftop playground. Farm animals. An art room. Jungle raves.
Support workers who treated you like a person.
We climbed things, built things, got muddy, made mistakes, disappeared for hours.
It was freedom.
It was full expression
As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched a lot of those spaces disappear.
Murals painted over. Creative subjects cut. Community spaces under pressure.
We’re increasingly encouraged to stay inside and look down at our phones.
This exhibition is me saying: let’s keep playing out.
Let’s see our towns, estates and ignored places as adventures again.
Not nostalgically — in the present tense. They still are.
Take your phone out one day and walk somewhere you already know.
Cross the road. Take a different turning. Look over a fence. Trust your instincts.
I don’t really believe in fate.
But I do believe attention changes what a place becomes.
Over the last eighteen months I’ve learned I’m autistic and have ADHD.
It’s helped me understand how I move through the world, and my photography.
For a long time I thought people simply didn’t like me.
Now I realise people have been supporting me all along.
This exhibition came together in three months.
In truth, I probably wanted three years.
In true Robin fashion, much of it was left until the last minute.
It’s still not finished.
Hopefully it’s only just begun.
Robin Hardman