CURRENT PROJECTS

MAGNA CARTA | FACES
A Celebration of Magna Carta.

Edward Fitzgerald CBE QC
Portrait taken at the Goodenough Club, London
(click image to enlarge)

The House Magazine is the weekly publication for MPs and Peers at Westminster. Published by Dods every week when Parliament is sitting, it provides an outlet for parliamentarians to discuss the big political issues of the day. Since 1832 Dods has been seen as the leading provider of political publications for all levels of UK Government and the political community. Regularly highlighted in independent 'best read' research, the company's publications link the political communities of the United Kingdom and Europe, furthering democratic progress and aiding political transparency, allowing readers to keep abreast of political developments at all levels.

This Book and Exhibition of contemporary Photographic Portraits will be created and published in the approach to the 800th Anniversary in June 2015 of the sealing by King John of Magna Carta.  Through Portrait Photography, the book and exhibition are intended to contribute a highly accessible way of communicating and celebrating the ongoing importance and evolving significance of Magna Carta.

To the interested citizen, it appears historically that the constitutional significance of Magna Carta has depended less upon what the Charter said than upon what it was thought to have said and the idea of the Charter went well beyond its actual content.  Perhaps for many it meant the idea of total liberty whereas the actual liberties granted by the Charter were limited and by no means intended to be applied to all.  Appeals to this particular source over centuries by factions seeking to find in it a justification for particular positions in struggles over constitutional development have only reinforced its importance and totemic resonance.  Magna Carta was arguably the most significant early influence on the extended historical process that led to the rule of Constitutional Law today in the English speaking world; it influenced the development of Common Law and Constitutions, most visibly that of the United States.

During 2012 Dods will be creating a dedicated website and their sponsorship of this exhibition and book will be part of their contribution to the many national and international celebrations of Magna Carta's 800th anniversary.

Each of the eminent people invited to sit for their Portrait will also be asked to contribute in up to 300 words a personal reflection on Magna Carta's contemporary and continuing relevance. This series of Portraits of leading figures concerned with Justice, Human Rights and Constitutional Law together with selected Academics and Apologists from organizations concerned with liberty, this book will show 21st century Faces of those still inspired by the continuing relevance of Magna Carta and linked to each other by their affection and respect for this remarkable document. Portrait sittings commenced in 2011.



DODS / HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT TRUST

Commissioned Portraits of participants in the History of Parliament Trust's Oral History project. Commences late 2011.



PASSION | POWER | INFLUENCE

People who exercise passion, power and influence with subtlety and thoughtful intelligence are of greater interest to me than those who are, at heart, merely ambitious. These choices of portraits from my work are themselves a work in progress - examples seen on the People gallery include Parliamentarian Frank Field MP , TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber and Political Cartoonist Martin Rowson.




PLACES | INSPIRATION | CONSEQUENCES

We are familiar with images of places connected to important events in our collective conciousness - often these are dramatic in the sense of a place where a physical action of historical significance, for example a battleground, a summit meeting, or a launch of some hugely important process, is understood to have occurred.

In the history of ideas there is also in some sense a footprint - even though there may be no physical marker - at the site of the birth of a particular insight of importance. We usually have to rely on the idea's author for  an anecdotal report of the location - and where these reports are credible it is intriguing to link an image of the place, however prosaic that may be, to the powerful insight.

In London for example, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, on the 12th of September 1933 a thirty-five old Hungarian physicist named Leo Szilard waited for a pedestrian light to change. The light went green and he started to cross the road; by the time he reached the other side it had occurred to him how in certain circumstances it might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction, liberate energy on an industrial scale and construct atomic bombs.

Once shared, that insight had a monumental and irreversible effect on the world. (Source data: "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, published by Simon & Shuster 1986)