Porters is a large horticultural growers in Formby, Merseyside, with large greenhouses covering over 12 acres on three sites, supplying fuchsias and garden products to national retailers like B & Q and Woolworths. Checking plants for fungus are Agnieszka (left) and Isabella (right), both from the Polish town of Kielce, and two of the thirty Polish workers currently employed by Porters, from a total workforce of 35.
The composition was clear to me as soon as entered the greenhouse, I wanted to show the industrial scale of the plant-growing, and I looked for suitably interesting and photogenic people to populate the image. I chatted to them briefly, I have visited Poland so there was some common ground, their English was certainly good enough for a conversation.
They were animated and smiling the whole time I was there, I did not pose them or ask them to smile for the camera - I did shots of them at work, before asking them to look at camera for this shot, I preferred this because they had their heads down when working and their faces were not really visible.
I agree that there is a slightly strange atmosphere to this shot which only became apparent to me when viewing it afterwards - the repeated triangles of the roof occur also in the girls' figures, and the negative space between them, and their beaming expressions are somehow a little unnerving. Like the earlier National Geographic assignment, I have the feeling that there could be a whole photo-essay here if I explored it in more depth.
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