Portable Studio

In 2014, Trevor Appleson took to the streets of Birmingham, England, photographing young people as they shopped, partied, studied, and just hung out. Appleson invited his sitters to not just pose for their portraits, but also to create their own archives using what was important to them. The result is a fascinating mix of the physical and the digital, from crumpled diaries to blog pages, from memory boxes to online search histories. Portable Studio gives unique insight into the lives of its subjects, their culture, self-image, and talismans. Interviews and commentaries from academics and historians contextualize the project and complete these multifaceted representations of identity.