No pain whatsoever

'No pain whatsoever’ is a curated exhibition in several international venues in 2013 and a book. The book, Grant, Ken 'No pain whatsoever…'ISBN number 978-91-981253-5-1 is available to download from the University of Ulster Repository, item 28337. Progressing on Grant's 20 year long research of the quieter, unmapped aspects of working class culture, referenced in the curated show ‘Nothing is in the place’, the photographs in the exhibition and book ‘No Pain Whatsoever’ foreground the small circles of trust or unorthodox working methods that prevail in former working class communities in the North West of England. The notion of stable working class lives are long outmoded –and the crude labelling of ‘the underclass’ has been a blunt and less than complex term that attempted to gather a sense of those who live outside of conventional work patterns. The photographs are a series that coalesce to relate Grant's attempts to articulate such social patterns –with lives lived through intimate circles of trust and dependency. The pictures involved sustained engagement and field research, drawing upon oral histories and extended periods of time photographing and returning to families and social groups in and around the Mersey River district. More sustained research was dominated by patterns of narrative, notions of the vernacular in documentary practice and the question of how to photograph and articulate those aspects of working class experience that exist -but which do not fall into traditional visual descriptions of the kind long outmoded and under performing in much photographic practice. Areas considered, though not explicitly titled, include unemployment, family engagement and the social tensions experienced in sustaining lives in difficult financial circumstances. The process involved photographing with and around social circumstances over many months, with work returned to those participating or granting access. The work exists as both a curated exhibition of 11 images and a book of Grant's photographs produced in collaboration with the Swedish photographer and publisher, Gosta Flemming (Journal). The reach and impact of the work was further enhanced through mainstream media publication including BBC News in pictures; Guardian 27 Feb 2013; Independent on Sunday 1 March 2013.