Navigating Light

Hilary Powell made this locket during a residency at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where she transformed a shipping container into a tintype photographic studio to create a portrait of the container shipping industry in the Port of London. The London Docks are a microcosm of international trade, populated by people from all over the world working in an industry that is integral to the functioning of society, yet is largely invisible and located on the margins.

Through a process of experimentation that included building customisted cameras and working with light, chemicals and site elements, Powell produced these tiny portraits of container shipping crew. She cut discs from corten steel taken from a shipping container on which to develop the images and housed the resulting tintype photographs in lockets, referencing the kind of historic keepsake that used to be worn close to the heart. The lockets are symbolic of the workers' connection to home while at sea, where they often spend many months on end, but also draw connections between past and present and between historic photographic processes and the materialities of the container shipping industry.