Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017

PHOTOGRAPHY
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Lisa Wolfe and Peter Chrisp
Christmas crackers
Christmas in Hawaii, 1986
The first Christmas
photo that we did was in
1986. It was ‘Christmas
in Hawaii’. Lots of people
dress up for Christmas
cards. They dress up
their kids, their dog,
themselves, so Peter and I
thought we would too and
I guess we just didn’t stop.
We started fairly
modestly, with a little
set and bits of costume,
and our ambition grew
as the years went by.
The more we kept doing
them, the more people
would ask ‘what’s the
next one?’ So, now we feel that we can’t stop
and we do enjoy it. In the beginning they all
had hand-drawn stamps and hand-written
messages from the characters to add context to
the photographs.
It’s all shot in our house with painted backdrops.
After Hawaii, we did outer space and
then deep-sea diving. Peter is a writer, but he’s
also a very good maker, and I’m a painter with a
huge dressing up box. They used to be taken on
an SLR camera using the self-timer. Peter had
to run backwards and forwards and we’d never
know if any of them were any good. Now, with a
digital camera, we get less sweaty… it was always
very sweaty, running around dressed as aliens.
We don’t think too long about them. We
just make a decision, knock it up and do it. It’s
a rare one where we are
wearing proper costumes
rather than something
homemade. They are
nearly all fantasy characters
except one year
when Peter dressed up as
Toulouse-Lautrec, and
one slight aberration in
2006 when we got married
in New York. We found
a giant rabbit costume in
the apartment where we
were staying, so we made
one of our witnesses dress
up in it took lots of shots
on the streets of the city.
Whilst they’re great fun,
what you’re seeing is a portrait of a partnership;
of a life together. I look back and think
‘I was actually quite pretty’, and ‘look at our
hair!’ You can see our changing dynamic going
through the years and there’s a poignancy about
it too. Peter hates me saying this, but at some
point, who knows when, it will end.
People keep asking ‘when is the book coming
out?’ and I’m hoping to do an exhibition of
them all one day. For now I’m making a calendar
with twelve of the images and this month I’ll
be showing them in the Artists Open Houses,
upstairs at The Stanley Road Store.
As told by Lisa Wolfe to Lizzie Lower
Lisa will be at The Stanley Road Store (25 Stanley
Road) on Sundays only until the 17th of December.
11am–6pm. aoh.org.uk
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