‘In 48 hours we’ll hopefully be on the right track’ Thurstan Redding says nervously. He’s referring to  the opening of the project he conceived, developed and slaved over during the last nine months - ‘Cambridge Faces’, a selection of student portrait photography on the theme ‘English heritage’. Over the course of our interview he describes the impressive trajectory the project has taken from initial musings to a vision of completion, which will finally be enacted tonight – at an opening taking place at no other venue than Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam museum.

He begins by telling me candidly that the exhibition in part came out of a ‘selfish’ desire to make the most of his time at Cambridge: ‘everybody else was doing so many activities’. ‘I really hate sports, I don’t act’ he jokes, but ‘I wanted to set a challenge for myself’. He found a starting point in his family’s involvement in photography, his father being a photographer and his brother working in the industry. However, it was after simultaneously reading a ‘life changing’ photography book by Richard Avedon and realising that photography, despite being ‘accessible’, was  ‘not really exploited’ in Cambridge that he realised the form his endeavour should take.

He initially enlisted the help of his college, Queens’, art society, which he became President of last year. However, the project quickly grew to become university wide because there was ‘so much photography talent’ and ‘it was important to find the best’. Although he retained control of ‘Cambridge Faces’, picking all the final images and giving creative direction, he repeatedly tells me how 'thankful’ he is to everyone who’s helped him.

As his vision grew a theme developed: ‘English heritage’, because he saw in it a possibility to create ‘a clash’ between ‘what is a really old classic theme’ and the ‘fresh young twist on things’ given by students. The portrait (or ‘faces’) theme emerged, again, via Richard Avedon, who inspired his own contribution to the exhibition. He cites a ‘massive’ image of Warhol’s factory by the photographer which pointed him in terms of composition towards a piece which ‘you can’t see all of’ at once – ‘you have to travel along it’. The fact that ‘he didn’t know how to use a camera until a year ago’ is not belied by the ambitious nature of the work, which uses forty-three Cambridge students to explore British fashion and style since World War I. Other images look at the stereotypically English idea of reserve, re-interpret lines from Shakespeare’s plays and juxtapose facial silhouettes with iconic British buildings. 

All this was only made possible with sponsorship by Epson, which Redding impressively gained by turning up at their offices to talk directly to the Head of PR: ‘I just arrived in Hartfordshire without really knowing what I was doing there’. ‘I genuinely never thought someone as big as Epson would ever be interested’ he tells me. Yet they’ve since been ‘really supportive’, funding the whole enterprise, making press releases and attempting to create a long-term relationship with whatever talent they discover. He also describes the conceptual importance of having a corporate presence to help ‘take it a bit further’.

The final element Redding addresses is equally central to his vision: the charitable nature of the project. Money raised from the sale of prints of the photographs goes to ‘The Affinity Project’ and ‘Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research’. In the former he sees a parallel with his own enterprise in that ‘they’re both student initiatives that turned into quite large projects’, having a reach greater than their creators could have expected. The latter was selected for more personal reasons: two students at Queens were recently diagnosed with Lymphoma and he felt it was important for the college to make a symbolic and financial ‘sign of solidarity’. 

What happens next, I ask? He hopes there will be a ‘Cambridge Faces’ volume two, but he also speaks ambiguously about a project called ‘Cambridge Studios’ which will be based on interview-portraits with ‘interesting figures in Cambridge’. I wish him the best and eagerly await the opening of the exhibition – which I will be lucky enough to attend. This is a ‘Cambridge face’ that we will surely we seeing more of. 

See the exhibition at the Cambridge Union on 14 and 15 March (free entry) or visit www.cambridgefaces.com to find out more. You can also read a review at http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/4612