The House of Commons has selected me to be the nation’s official Election Artist, commissioned by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, to document the campaign activity in the run up to the 2010 General Election.

The artwork will be my own interpretation and record of the General Election, based on special access to the election campaigns. My photographs will be exhibited in the House of Commons later this year and enter the Parliamentary Art Collection.

The project will centre on the relationship between the politicians canvassing and the voting public with images from battle-buses and village greens to polling stations and shopping centres. I plan to traverse the country in a motorhome during the three weeks of canvassing, photographing with a traditional 5x4” plate camera on film. I hope that the multi-layered and detailed tableaux images will provide an enduring and unique artistic response to the next General Election.

There have been two previous election commissions: Jonathan Yeo’s Proportional Representation, a series of three portraits of the party leaders painted for the 2001 General Election and David Godbold's Forward not backward, a series of eighteen drawings made for the 2005 General Election. This will be the first time photography has been selected as the medium.

You can download a press release about the commission here.

As part of the project I am also giving the public the chance to get involved in the commission, by submitting photographs relating to political activity in their local area leading up to and during the election.

I am interested in utilising photographs taken by the public, uploaded from digital cameras or transmitted via mobile phones, to create an alternative photographic vision alongside my own. This will add a collaborative and democratic dimension to the final artwork. The public’s images will also help to provide an antidote to the more stage-managed photographs increasingly seen of the campaign trail.

By documenting local political experiences, you will be contributing to an archive of photographs that capture the richness and complexity of Britain’s political landscape in 2010.

Your photographs could be of anything that is connected to the election: local party members canvassing on your street, images of the battle buses, campaign posters, crowds gathering listening to political speeches, campaign hustings in the village hall, election photo calls or photographs related to local issues that you feel should be addressed by those candidates canvassing for your vote. There is no ‘correct’ photo, so please send them in. You can see some examples of work submitted already in the gallery here.

Just follow the simple instructions on the upload page here.

The public’s photographs will be published here on The Election Project online gallery with some selected to be displayed at the official exhibition in the House of Commons later in the year.

You can watch a BBC video about the commission here.
You can read an article on Direct.gov website here.
You can read an article in the Guardian here.