The State of the Art Gallery (SOTA) and Oxfordshire photographer David Willoughby have teamed up to provide Witney people, both adults and children, with a unique opportunity this Saturday to take part in creating a portrait of Witney and so become part of a unique collage of photographs of local people.

Between 10am and 4pm, Willoughby will working in a gazebo just outside the gallery, in the heart of Witney, taking photographic portraits of anyone who would like to take part. There is no need to book or pay . . . simply turn up!

Willoughby will then bring together all these portraits to create the final piece. He is very keen to encourage as many people as possible to take part so that the finished piece will reflect all aspects of Witney and its people, young and old, and from all walks of life. The mayor and the local MP are both delighted to take part and to be photographed, as are the inimitable Witney butchers and a wide range of other people, including Jennifer Cronshaw, who runs the SOTA gallery whose delightful portrait appears right. The final piece, a collage of all the portraits, will be on show at SOTA from early August before moving to its permanent home in the Witney Museum in the autumn.

Willoughby was inspired to undertake the project by photographer Karl Taylor who made a similar piece in Orkney some years ago. He was very taken by the way in which Taylor succeeded in capturing the combined face and the individual faces of a community at a single point in time. So Willoughby, who is Witney born and bred, decided to replicate the project, both in the interest of portraying his own town and its folk and in order to pose an artistic challenge to the current widely-held view that towns and cities have lost or are losing their identities. Willoughby’s background is in printing but his main love, indeed passion, is photography. He works mainly with landscapes and architecture, but has become increasingly drawn to portraiture, which he describes as ‘the person bringing the picture to you as the photographer’ through their features, expression, how they present to the camera and how they dress.

Illustrated above is the poster being used to advertise the event, featuring Chloe Ostojak, Willoughby’s niece: framed in colour and set against a backdrop of Witney’s Buttercross, which blurred members of the crowd bustle past.

So for this historic community-focused event Witney is likely to be in carnival mood on Saturday as people are encouraged to come and be photographed as part of a unique tribute to themselves and the part they play in creating their market town’s strong identity.

SOTA Witney Saturday, 10am-4pm 01993 862799