Alex Haydn-Williams

Morning Beauty

Dream This Silly
Queercircle, London
Autumn 2024

A piece on queer explorations in private, and how they pave the way for public ones. Or, in words lifted from a 1950s ad starring my grandma’s glam-model cousin – Morning Beauty! begins at night.

The Washway

John Hughes Arts Festival
Cambridge
Winter 2022

The lost River Effra flows under Brixton, like a thread pulling the town together. On the surface until the Victorians made it an efficient sewer, the old stream still affects the shape of streets, houses and lives today.

Here, at Railton Road (known to the Romans as the Washway, after the river alongside it), the houses sit back from the road, their long gardens a ghostly image of lost water. This photo/textile piece embroiders silver thread through an emulsion print, to reflect that soft haunting in its stillness and shine, making the Effra’s path visible again.

Otherwhere

John Hughes Arts Festival
Online
Spring 2021

During the first lockdown, as summer failed to happen, I became obsessed with Northern-European writers’ accounts of Italy. When they went south, had these authors seen a real country, or a romantic projection? Which had I seen?

I cut words from canonical texts (Othello, Room with a View, The Red Tenda of Bologna) and overlaid them, glossy-supplement-style, on my 35mm photos – questioning the relationship between text and image, legend and life, photography and memory.