A snapshot of the Lancashire life

A Preston museum has been used as the scene to showcase and celebrate the diversity of people living in Lancashire.
Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.
Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.

Barmaids, graphic designers, housewives and the unemployed were all part of the Relative Strangers exhibition taken by Alyssa Gilbert in the Harris Museum.

The photography and media studies tutor at Preston College says she has captured a day in history and says she hopes to continue her work.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It all started as trying to get more people in to the museum as the archives aren’t being viewed as much as they should be,” she said. “These aren’t people I’ve asked to come along and I haven’t created this society, these were the people in the museum at the time, which just shows the diversity of the county.”

Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.
Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.

Alyssa, who is working in collaboration with the Lancashire Archives, said the idea is to build a catalogue of local portfolios which will then be submitted to the Bow Lane archives in Preston. The Preston’s College tutor said: “The idea is that anyone can get involved – it is about what Lancashire means or represents to people living here today.

“These photos show where different people were on that day in history.”

And Alyssa is actively encouraging Lancashire-based residents and emerging photographers to share their representations of the county and upload to Twitter with the hashtag #Lancsarchive

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The project shares similarities with Brandon Stanton’s ‘Humans of New York’ series, which since its launch on Facebook in 2010 now has more than 15 million followers.

Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.
Relative strangers exhibition in the Harris Museum.

It gives a glimpse into the lives and stories of the people who inhabit the Big Apple, showing New York City “one story at a time”

And the 24-year-old former UCLan student from Ormskirk says she hopes she can build up her collection.

“I’m hoping to build up quite a catalogue of images,” she said. “Hopefully I can go into different places across Lancashire and do the same thing to get a clearer picture of the people in the county.”

Related topics: