Andrew Jackson -The Golden Road

Andrew Jackson is one of Britain’s most gifted photographers who has over the past decade produced some of the most original and engaging work in social documentary. The Golden Road was a major new commission that took as its starting point the seemingly perennial and often contentious issue of immigration. In 2004, the European Union extended its membership to include a number of former Eastern bloc countries. Since this time, in the region of a million migrants are estimated to have come to Britain.

The Golden Road centres on the life of one such person, known as M who, without being able to speak English, travelled alone, from her village of 2000 people in Bratislava, Slovakia, to England to find work and to start a new life. Over the past two years, Jackson has documented aspects of M's life at close quarters, constructing through photographs, written observations and the film, No Work/No Cake (22 min.) an intimate but at times bleak portrait of M's attempts to build a life for herself in England. Set in Walsall, where Mlives, Jackson's images reflect a meticulous and critical approach to representation. Rather than photographing his subject, Jackson has instead chosen to focus on, in detail, elements of M's private and public domain. Though devoid of people and often possessing an almost mundane air, Jackson's images are instantly familiar, flitting between domestic settings and public spaces.

Photographs of M's flat are not intended to be any more voyeuristic than those taken, by Jackson, in public spaces. Alternatively, through their particular and considered composition, they attempt to construct a portrait of M, albeit a 'portrait' in which she does not appear. As Jackson explains: 'The images take us across the demarcation line of public and private space, and beyond too, the lines of demarcation between, the parts of our lives we feel we can control, to the chaos of public space, where the reflections and consumption of whom we are less resolved.' In The Golden Road, Jackson offers a work that can be read in many ways; not least as a counterpoint to dominant discourse, which underpinned by hostility and suspicion, have often hampered genuine debate around Britain's relationship to immigration. Equally, in its innovative use of the documentary genre, The Golden Road, is itself a critique of representation in a media age, making it a powerful, yet poignant, portrait of an individual and contemporary Britain.

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