Hello,

my name’s Mersedes Margoit, I’m a Latvian photographer that is now living in, working and calling London home. Whilst studying for my photography degree at university, I took a job in a bar and what began as a way to make ends meet has ended up changing the way I look at life. From experiencing the best and the worst of people and watching the great number of people come and go through the doors of the pub the workplace has become a blur of emotions. In the two and a half years that I’ve worked there I decided I would document some of these feelings and the people that form the tapestry of life at work in a series of semi formal portraits. Captured in between pouring pints and picking up empties i hope the portraits will serve to create a sense of time and place before like many of the customers i’ll walk out the door for the final time.

 

Portraits in the Castle is a project where I am setting out to document the many faces that pass through the doors of the Castle a bar and restaurant where I work based at Islington Borough in Farringdon, London.

Like most pubs and bars in London near a railway station The Castle boasts an ever revolving cast of transitory clientele and die-hard regulars who both see the bar as a way to pass some time having a cheeky drink before their journey and likewise a home away from home. And like most bars it’s not only the people that are constantly changing, the staff are always coming and going and having worked there for two years I set about documenting these people passing through the doors of the venue.

The project is about making sense of the experiences I have gone through during my time there, the hundreds of people each week that I come into contact with and connect with - it’s about documenting people who I may never see again, the chance encounters, the quirky and the mundane, the staff who move on, the quiet moments and the loud ones, capturing the good times and documenting the struggle as well.

The Castle has come to feel like a second home and one day it will be me who also will have to say good-bye and move on and i hope these portraits make some sort of sense of my time there.