Paris put in perspective

4:27pm Thursday 5th June 2008

EVERY so often, when reporting on arts and entertainment in Trafford, I come across somebody with an exceptional talent.

Somebody whose work is just so good it's impossible not to sit up and take notice. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, it's incredibly exciting. Altrincham based photographer Kate McLean is originally from London but she's fallen in love with her adopted home town and the north in general.

She also feels it's possible to bring a fresh perspective to a subject that's been photographed many times and hopes people who come to her latest exhibition, The Other Side of Paris, will come away looking at this romantic city in a different light.

"All the photographs are taken in Paris but they're not necessarily of places that people will recognise. I took photographs of everyday life in the city that most people think they know really well because they've seen so many iconic images of it already. It's the Paris that you're not normally looking for," she says.

Kate certainly has an eye for the quirky and the unusual - the exhibition features photographs of a solitary black Doc Marten boot and a very cute child's dress. Both objects, she says, fired her imagination, in completely different ways. "Walking up some steps towards the Sacre Coeur I saw one Doc Marten boot lying on one of the steps. It just jumped out as an image and I thought - what's the story here? Who does the boot belong to? Another was a little white dress that was in a window of a tailor's shop and it was just so beautiful and so small," she says.

Kate works both as a photographer and a designer and all the photographs you'll see in TOSOP were taken during her 12 months living and working in the French capital. As for her next project, she plans to train her lens on her adopted city of Manchester and she feels that not being born in the city will be an advantage.

"I don't know the city tremendously well, so I'm at an advantage, because I can walk around different places and see things that other people will walk past," she says. Rick Bowen * The Other Side of Paris is at Domino Gallery, 11 Upper Newington, Liverpool, until June 20. Kate wants to bring the show to Manchester at some point in the future. Anyone interested in finding out more should visit www.theothersideofparis.com