Lost & Found by Ryan Blackwell at Annex

London is a city of constant change. Things are bought-used-abandoned-replaced. Mattresses appear on pavements, objects gather among parks and rivers, and the traces of everyday life become part of the landscape. Most of the time we walk past them without looking. Lost & Found is an ongoing exploration of London through its waste; questioning what the things we leave behind tell us about how we live. Across four interconnected works, it looks at the objects, images and ideas that sit at the edges of our attention, asking what happens when we stop to look at them. Originally from Liverpool and now living and working in London, Ryan Blackwell approaches the city from the position of someone who has lived within it for many years without originally belonging to it. This perspective informs his interest in how our relationship to people, places and objects change through familiarity, distance and time. His practice explores how images negotiate between time, culture and place. Working across fashion, portraiture and beauty, he uses photography to examine the ways we construct meaning, value and identity through the images we make and consume. Lost & Found grows from this approach: a five-year investigation into London's discarded materials and the ways that what we choose to ignore remains an intrinsic part of the city we inhabit. Alongside his photographic practice, Blackwell works as an Associate Lecturer, remaining engaged with the ways in which images are made, understood and experienced.