"The ‘M’ Factor," Neil Roland / Suburb Caf�, Manchester, UK
Stephen Gosling
For those of you who don’t know Manchester, England, it is the Seattle of the United Kingdom. For those of you who don’t know Seattle–it rains. It rains a lot. In England there’s a saying that it’s "Grim up North," which basically means that it is wet, cold and windy, constantly. However, it would appear that someone forgot to mention this to Neil Roland before he embarked on his new solo exhibition, "The ‘M’ Factor," showing at the Suburb Café in Manchester’s city centre.
Encased in this modern retro-chic award-winning café is a fitting show depicting Manchester at its best. By presenting these glorious modern images against the retro French farmhouse feel of the café, the viewer cannot help but feel comfortable and confused at the same time. For this reason alone, the exhibit appears as a success. The images look comfortable in their surroundings and the viewers are comfortable in theirs. But the factor that resonates uneasiness is the images themselves.
The color of the photography is one of the dominant features of the images. Not created through filters or digital manipulation, the street scenes encased stand out from many documentary contemporaries you may see. As a local, it’s nice to see the landmarks you have grown up with beautified in this way. As a tourist, it is an intriguing doorway into an adventure that Manchester can easily provide. Herein lays the unease. The images look manipulated–the colors too strong, the days too bright, the scenery too beautiful. It doesn’t look like Manchester, but instead a dream of what Manchester can and occasionally should be.
Roland has done two major things with the images of this exhibit. First, he has taken what is beautiful in Manchester and decapitated it. Roland has cropped his images and displayed them together in diptychs, triptychs and more so that they have become nothing more than a representation of a dead Manchester–a Manchester that looks colorful and tempting. Was this juxtaposition intended? Secondly, he has shown Manchester as it hardly ever is and thus is representing it falsely. I’m not saying Manchester is terrible, it’s just hardly ever as beautiful as it has been depicted. Is this an unfair representation?
