The Bigger Picture
Photography by Tom Craig and writing by A.A. Gill

Exhibition by Flaere Gallery in association with Quintessentially
5th March - 10th March 2012
10 – 8pm daily
28 Cork Street
London, W1S 3NG

1st March, debate at The Frontline Club, Paddington

From Svalbard to Chad, photographer Tom Craig and writer A.A. Gill have travelled together on assignments across four continents in the last eight years. Flaere Gallery, in association with Quintessentially, brings together 20 unseen photographs by Tom Craig with accompanying text by A.A. Gill.

On their travels, the two connect the dots between disparate worlds - from life on a North Sea trawler to the glaciers of Greenland; encountering Tasmanian devils, Haitian hotspots and cricket matches on the streets of St Paul’s. Days are punctuated by conversations about experiences past and present: “Why is that Eskimo so drunk? Is that marsupial carnivorous? Are countries at war more successful fuelled on a diet of wheat or rice? Is that a bat in your curry?”

In his writing, A.A. Gill often alights on the modest object, fact or observation and through it unfolds a story that speaks volubly about that place in that time. Tom Craig’s photographs create the visual counterpoint, exposing the essence of people and places they come across.
This is a personal story told twice; a collaboration between a writer and a photographer that demonstrates how two perspectives and two media tell a different story from the same scene - and how together they make the narrative so much the richer.
“The one thing words and pictures have in common is that their craft is all in the editing. Out of the streaming confusion of information and images, we have to sift and select the things that make a cogent, coherent, engaging plot.
What is happening just outside the picture are the words. And when we get it right, the image and the writing, when they come together, they make something that is greater than their binary parts. They’re not illustrations or captions, but a tandem, complimentary work, without repetition or duplication. “ A.A. Gill

On 1st March, The Frontline Club, Paddington will host a discussion with Tom Craig and A.A. Gill as advocates for the collaboration of a photographer and writer and its importance for the future of photojournalism. The event will be moderated by David Campany.

Tom Craig is a British photographer and author/photographer of the acclaimed book “Writing on the Edge” where he brought together an incredible group of individuals with whom he travelled to war torn countries. These trips included journeys to The Gaza strip with Daniel Day-Lewis, Uzbekistan with Danny Boyle, Colombia with Martin Amis and the Congo with Joanne Harris. The book documented the frontline work of the Nobel peace prize winning humanitarians, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF).

One of the world’s most in-demand photographers, Tom has shot multiple covers for Vogue magazine with his work appearing regularly in numerous UK and US publications. Among other current projects, he writes and shoots a weekly photography column “Snapshot” in The Sunday Times Style Magazine.

A.A. Gill is a writer and critic whose acerbic views on travel, television, and food are among the most widely read in Britain. He is the author of 10 books and collections of his extensive travels around the globe, most recently "A.A. Gill is Further Away" and "Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There."

A.A. Gill is the TV and restaurant critic for The Sunday Times and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. Born in Scotland, he lives in London.