Creating magical and evocative stories through objects is central to Stuart Haygarth’s work. Even as a commercial photographer, crafting book covers and photo-montages for clients including Esquire, Daimler-Chrysler and Penguin, Haygarth would arrange objects and materials into collages before photographing the tableaux for print. This Design Museum commission celebrates Haygarth’s recent experiments in detailed narratives through lighting design.

Born in Whalley, Lancashire in 1966, Haygarth studied graphic design at Exeter College of Art and Design before starting his career in photography. His first lighting designs in 2005 were a series of exquisite chandeliers constructed from the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life – ranging from a collection of discarded objects washed up on the Kent coastline to a collection of millennial Party Poppers.

As Haygarth has said, “my work revolves around everyday objects, collected in large quantities, categorized and presented in such a way that they are given new meaning. It is about giving banal and overlooked objects new significance.”