Chris, aged 37 is a documentary photographer, filmmaker and designer.  He graduated in Psychology and Politics in 1996 and after writing his thesis on Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, he then spent 6 months working on a social reconstruction project in war torn Croatia.

With a passion for all things Balkan and surrounded by the scarred landscapes of Croatia, he started using an old 35mm camera in order to try to document his experience. He started a photography project in 1997 as a volunteer when he set up and managed a photographic project for children in Sarajevo orphanage in Bosnia.  The project taught children the basic principles of B/W photography and print-making in a specially constructed darkroom.

Chris then joined a UK-based International charity as a Visual Communications Manager in 2000, with responsibility for photography, short documentary films, print and web design.  In 2005 Chris set up business as a freelance photographer and filmmaker. He continues to work for several international charities and NGO’s travelling throughout Eastern Europe and Africa photographing and filming to document their work.

He has held photographic exhibitions and screenings throughout the UK, including Hoopers Gallery, House of Commons in London, Street Level Gallery, Document Film Festival, CCA, GFT and Platform in Glasgow. His multimedia photography work is featured regularly in newspapers and his film work has been shown at Film Festivals across Europe.

Chris recently graduated with a Masters in Documentary Photography and received a distinction award for Hope, Memories, Loss & Community, a multimedia project that documented stories of regeneration throughout Glasgow, from the closure of Paddy’s Market to the demolition of Sighthill and Red Road Flats.  He is planning to continue this project under the title of ‘The Glasgow Renaissance.‘ He currently lives in the East End of Glasgow with his wife and two children.

chris@chrisleslie.co.uk
www.chrisleslie.com

[ Short film by Emma Lennox ]

Mitch Miller is an illustrator, writer and editor of The Drouth. He ‘invented’ the illustrative style of the Dialectogram in 2009 and has since worked with residents, employees, users and visitors to a number of different spaces in Glasgow. Each dialectogram blends the memories and experiences of these participants with documentary and mytho-geographic techniques to illustrate forgotten and disappearing places in Glasgow. The image is drawn directly onto an A0 board which, after being scanned and produced as a high-quality digital print for the participants, is offered to the collection of the People’s Palace Museum in Glasgow.

Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Mitch has worked variously as a social researcher, educator, sign painter, sessional lecturer and film programmer (depending on what day of the week it is). In-between all this he has co-authored two books and has been widely published as an art and film critic on subjects ranging from early and amateur cinema, contemporary illustration, mytho-geography and Scottish politics, and is an acknowledged expert on the history of travelling showpeople in Scotland (being from that background himself).

He has shown his work at Market Gallery, an Tobar, The People’s Palace, Mitchell Library, Glasgow Film Festival, Sheffield International Documentary Festival, macrobert centre, the Centre for Contemporary Arts and The Telfer Gallery. Along with Emma Lennox he co-authored and illustrated the experimental web-documentary Boswell in Space. Mitch is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Glasgow School of Art (on the subject of Dialectograms) and lives with his partner in the East End of Glasgow where many of his immediate family and relatives are quartered during the winter. He is also five minutes walk away from Chris Leslie and his family, which has made this project a lot lighter on the bus fares than it might have been.

http://dialectograms.co.uk/
glasgowdialectogram@gmail.com