Victoria Gardens. Shaw uses home made mechanical cameras and enlargers in his work. © Jonathan Shaw

The Leeds Met Gallery is showcasing (re)collect, a new solo exhibition by photographic artist and graphic designer Jonathan Shaw, running until February 25 2006. Two of the works on display have been inspired by Leeds itself.

Shaw explores the interrelationship of time and motion by building his own mechanically driven cameras and enlargers. By using this technique, he creates a relationship between moving and still image and between time and place and has further explored these methods in his Leeds works.

In October 2005 Shaw spent several days in Victoria Gardens, outside Leeds’ central library, observing and selecting passers-by to feature in his work. The people who consented to appear in his work were choreographed and photographed and impressions gathered over several days were compressed into a single image.

Victoria Gardens. © Jonathan Shaw

The final image, Victoria Gardens, is an extended streetscape that stands two metres high by nine long.

Shaw’s work is aesthetically pleasing, technically astonishing and socially committed. Victoria Gardens depicts a well-functioning society where people have an easy rapport with each other, talking to each other across various age and race groups.

However, while the image seems to show a real situation, it conjures up an idealised society – a society that is not blighted by the breakdown of communication across generations and social groups.

Victoria Gardens. This central work is nine metres long and two tall. © Jonathan Shaw

The sense of swiftness and comfort that permeates this image is reminiscent of idealised advertising material but, with the absence of any commercial message, viewers can revel in the aesthetics of the image without having to fend off any attempts on their purse.

In the second work, Corn Xchange, Shaw mounted a video camera on a pedestal and installed it in the Corn Exchange in Leeds. The camera captured shoppers as they passed and interacted with the camera. Many hours of footage were edited down into a 15-minute interactive projection, allowing the spectator to determine which aspects of it are played, paused or bypassed.

The level of interactivity is rather too low to be satisfying, however, comparable to hopping up and down the TV channels or jumping from one website to the other on the internet. Yet the footage itself is entertaining to watch and certainly captures the spirit of one of Leeds’ most popular shopping places.

Several of Shaw’s earlier works are also displayed, including Crash 7, New Street and Gallery 13.