 Vee Spears' portraits have been acquired by the Sir Elton John collection, the Half Moon collection, George Eastman House and many other private collectors throughout the world. Along with Annie Lee Ritz, Joe Peter Wittgen and Leonard Nielsen, she was just one of four photographers exhibited during the grand opening of the Photographiska in Sweden in 2010. Vee Spears moved to Paris in 1990 and it was here that she took the photographs of her first monograph called Bordello, which created this kind of feel of a 1930s Paris red-light district, because this is kind of where Vee Spears was living at the time, so out on the streets was all these, well she wasn't living out on the streets, they're out on the streets, there were a number of prostitutes, and she thought, well it'd be a good idea to photograph all of these guys, but rather than just doing straight photographs of prostitutes, she thought, well I'll create the sort of feeling of the upmarket Bordello and ended up with these beautiful photographs that have an almost brusai-like quality to them. As lovely as these images are, today I'd like to focus on my two favourite monographs of Vee Spears. This is The Birthday Party and Bulletproof. I forget when I first became aware of these haunting portraits of children that have a bizarre kind of vintage, yet futuristic feel to them. What I do recall is being fixed by this collective gaze and it being once drawn into the world of this childlike imagination, but also at the same time being made to feel that my presence there as an adult was extremely not welcome. Vee Spears has said that she feels that her portraits are almost like a landscape of a person and when you look at the photographs of these children, you can almost see this idea coming through with the layering being formed through the costumes and the colouring, the simple lighting in the background and of course their direct expressions, much like you would find layers in a great landscape photograph. Each of these elements in the images come together to create something greater than the sum of this part and to draw you deeper and deeper into the image. Stick her out to the end and I will show you the secret about how Vee Spears creates a fantastical look in these photographs. The Birthday Party is this kind of anarchistic sort of world where the children are allowed to just pretty much be whoever they want to be. Of course there's supposed to be a party so they're all dressed up and but beneath these fanciful costumes there is a sense of childlike anarchy. Lord of the Flies is Vee Spears' favourite book and you can well imagine that book being a strong influence in the feel of this world where it's only children. If you're not familiar with Lord of the Flies because that is the book where there's a bunch of school kids who are stranded on the desert island and they devolve almost into being savages. All of these children have been left to their own devices to forge out identities and to play roles but there's always a darker sort of hidden vibe throughout these photographs. Within all of them even the more upbeat ones there's something ever so slightly unsettling. It's most likely because we're not used to seeing photographs of children where they're always on the same eyeline as us you know as adults of course we are physically taller so we tend to look down on children and what makes it even more unsettling is that because these children are quite clearly children but they're dressing like adults and they have some adult themes going through there and coupled that with this determination that we really associate with portraits of children with them looking and fixing us with their gaze it lends this all the images this this air of slight uneasiness that I find quite fascinating. One of the things that has made me a big fan of Vee Spears' work with these two monographs is that the way that the subject has been treated from an aesthetic point of view they somewhat remind me of of Diane Arbus' photography in there the way that they have a matter-of-fact presentation of the subject in front of them. In fact Vee Spears has actually said that she would love to be Diane Arbus and and be able to meet such fascinating interesting characters like like Diane did but I think in this case you that far more so I find these these images a lot more intriguing than than Diane Arbus' because they have a certainly from in my mind more of a story behind them and I find that is is what draws me again and again to Vee Spears' photography. Vee Spears has said that you know her style is kind of playful it's got some beautiful elements either it's strange and it's melancholic obvious and unexpected and like you do certainly see this in work that there's so much so many so not so much but so many juxtapositions going on and that's something that is really fascinating about her photography you know great photographs they bear repeated viewing they invite us to look deeper and explore the images time and time again to to to address our own feelings about the photographs and how we interpret them and to sort of see if we can align ourselves with the message that the the photography is trying to convey. It's like those great Renaissance paintings with the little hints about the personality of the sitters are left dotted around the frame for us to sort of seek out and discover and enjoy. Six years after the birthday party Vee Spears did a follow-up monograph called Bulletproof. Now this book she was photographing the same children but as they progress into adolescence and into young adulthood and the feeling this time is extremely different. The children are all either armed with a weapon or some sort of protective gear themselves as if they are almost preparing to face the challenges of adult life. It's marking this end of childhood and of course the clue is in the name Bulletproof and you know is how the children are preparing to face the drama of a world that is forcing them to be something that they may not necessarily want to be. You see this a lot throughout the book where a lot of the the portraits the children are wearing masks and this reminds me somewhat of the masks that we wear as adults that we used to protect ourselves from the world you know to put on a public face as it were. If we look at you know my three-year-old he runs around as a lunatic and he makes silly faces and stuff like that and he is 100% himself but as he gets older he's going to start developing I don't want to say fake personalities but personalities that he feels other people want to see and this is where this this concept of masks intrigues me in these photographs that these are unsettling because they're odd-looking masks but they're a continuation of a scene that we started to sort of see in in the birthday party that children are beginning to lose this childlike imagination and becomes something that the world expects them to be and we need to hold on to our childhood you know the excitement and imagination of childhood. I mentioned earlier that all of the portraits in these two monographs have this weird haunting sort of look and feel to them and it's become certainly a trademark of these beers' work throughout this sort of period this this kind of vintage-y sort of feel and it all came about because one of those happy accidents that happen occasionally in photography. Prior to the birthday party all of these beers' photographs had been in black and white and when she started doing the birthday party photographs it was only natural that she would photograph in black and white using her Polaroid film stock. It was only when she was halfway through the series of portraits that these beers realized that you know maybe these photographs will look a lot better in color so she was a little bit stuck and decided what she's going to have to do is to take the stock that she already photographed all the Polaroids, scan them and then put them into Photoshop and give them a hand tint because that was the only sort of way that she was going to get any color into these images. It's this coloring along with these kind of very odd choice of props that don't seem to exist in any specific space or time behind Doctor Who that give us they all come together again to lend this feeling of slightly uneasiness and this is again I keep coming back to this point about the photographs and they do have this odd sort of feeling and that's something that I absolutely love about these photographs is that they don't seem to be on a trend they seem to be of the person of the photographer themselves and that's what makes a great photography is that they have a unique voice. This series of portraits ended up in this natural conclusion with a collection called dystopia in 2017 and here now the children will become adults and they are more like images or characters from a Tim Burton movie who have no real sort of fixed identity or gender you know their roles are kind of all over the place and again unsettling and uneasy. We look at these photographs we look at the way the children have become adults that they have become almost invincible characters in the stories of their own imagination you know the heroes and the shamans and the fighters that within us we all seem to carry somewhere and we lose along the journey towards adulthood. This video about v-spears is part of my series showcasing great photographers I put the playlist up down the screen right there check it out as there's some amazing photography waiting to be discovered so if you're new here please do hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so that you'll know when these new videos are released. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you again soon.