Off The Scale

Off The Scale is a sly dig at the City of London, hub to global financial trading, an activity that contributes little or nothing to society as a whole but which nevertheless has an outsized effect on all our lives, and about which we can do nothing. The title, a phrase sometimes used to describe the excessive salaries and bonuses paid to workers in the financial sector, is turned into a visual metaphor by juxtaposing the city’s massive blocks with tiny human figures. But far from being preachy the images offer a visual fascination as office interiors and lighting interact with reflections of clouds or neighbouring buildings, and reflected light from the vast glass blocks create patterns in the narrow streets. The images are presented frameless, mounted on aluminum sheet, and printed on a rough texture paper that adds dimension to the fabric of some of the buildings. Visitors to the Gallery will be able to collect a free zine of Off The Scale.

William Shapter is a London based street photographer, currently concentrating on street portraits of people taking part in protests and demonstrations, a small selection of which can be seen in the gallery’s smaller ‘Print Room’. Prints from two other projects, Urban Chiaroscuro and Japanese Garden can also be seen in the ‘Print Room’.

Although William (‘Bill’) Shapter trained and worked as a photographer in his twenties, most of his working life has been in film and television. His return to still photography was marked by the Camden Image Gallery’s 2021 exhibition, Did You See Or Hear Anything? Inspired by Bruegel’s 16th Century painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, in which nobody seems to have noticed that Icarus has fallen to his death. The exhibition consisted of 65 prints of scenes of London Street murders and pedestrians’ reactions, or non-reactions, to the memorials left there. Limited numbers of a 130 page book of Did You See Or Hear Anything? are also available to visitors in return for a small donation to an anti-knife crime charity.