100 People of Windsor – one year on

Derek Reay is a photographer living and working in Windsor, Berkshire, he photographed 100 people in Windsor for a book titled – not surprisingly – ’100 People in Windsor’. One year later, The Firestation Arts Centre and Windsor Festival jointly sponsored a project to reunite as many of the original 100 people together for an anniversary photograph.

The idea was to chart the movements of his subjects and the picture of a town. One had sadly passed, 3 were in Afghanistan, two were divorced, one was at a seminar in California, one had gone home to Poland to visit his family, another had left the area, several could not come, one was on call that night and didn’t make it, one was still managing his supermarket till too late, the laundry lady got a rush on and couldn’t leave .. but the man who runs the chip shop gamely ran across the road for the five minutes the photo took and then went back to to serving his customers.

It was a blustery November night and raining hard yet just over half the people made it out that night, bringing several more guests, and, somehow, everyone had a really lovely evening. Maybe, the wine helped.