Photographs put on display to showcase all sides of city

One of Andrew Malbon's images, showing a father and son walking home after a Pompey match

IT'S an exhibition of photography designed to showcase all sides of Portsmouth.

Andrew Malbon, from St Jude’s Church, Southsea, will exhibit two sets of his contemporary photos featuring some of the defining experiences of living in the city.

His black-and-white photos showing ‘Pompey Saturdays’ get to the heart of what it feels like to roll up at Fratton Park full of expectation on a match-day – and the emotions generated by the result.

And his colour photos uncovering ’Southsea Sundays’ showcase the beauty and vitality of a sunny day on the seafront.

Both contrasting sets of images will be on display – and for sale – at St Jude’s Church, Kent Road, Southsea, from 9am-5pm each day until April 30.

It is designed to raise funds for a group of 18 adults and teenagers who are giving up 10 days of their holiday this summer to help decorate a school in Ghana.

The group, who have called themselves ‘Project G’, come from Church of England churches across Portsmouth.

They’ll be heading off for a life-changing trip to Ghana in July, decorating a classroom for children who have special needs.

They will visit St George’s Anglican School campus in the Diocese of Ho, in eastern Ghana, as part of the long-standing links between Portsmouth’s Church of England diocese and the Anglican dioceses in Ghana.

Andrew, who works as an architect for Portsmouth City Council, said: ‘I know some of the teenagers from our church who are going to Ghana, and I’m sure it will be a real eye-opening trip for them – to see African culture at close quarters and to explore how the Christian faith is expressed there.

‘I wanted to help out and thought one way to do it would be to sell some of the photos I’d taken. I’ve lived in Portsmouth since I was at university here, and I’m only a few hundred yards away from Fratton Park. You can see the expectation in the faces as the fans walk to the ground, and you can feel the elation or despair as they pour out again at the end. I wanted to capture that emotion.’

The Project G team of adults and teenagers will be led by Rachel Duff and Fran Carabott from St Jude’s, who have already been to Ho to map out the project.