Profile

Self portrait with dad

“I came to photography from a background in Fine Art, having started my training as a painter.

I feel that I am still trying to paint but with another medium. The way I conceive and construct images, is more informed by art history and cinematography, than the traditions of documentary photography. The creative act can be encapsulated in the decisive moment, but it can can also occur when an event is seen, re-imagined and re-made.

I prefer to work in the directorial mode, constructing images that are drawn from my immediate surroundings, using the visual language of tableaux and Old Master painting. The characters depicted are from the locale where the images are made. My recent work explores a more abstract territory, using landscape to reflect psychological space. All my work is a celebration of the everyday, and an investigation into that paradoxical moment when our surroundings can seem familiar, and yet uncertain and mysterious. The photographic fragment and what it can suggest to the viewer is more intriguing to me than more direct and explicit means of visual communication.

Primarily, I make work for the gallery wall, but I also work commercially shooting editorial portraiture and fashion. I am interested in the potential for cross-over between the different areas of photographic practice: Fine Art, Fashion, Portraiture and Documentary. These genres mainly operate separately with distinct and different visual codes that are intended for different audiences. There needs to be more dialogue between these areas, if the medium is to evolve further and truly reflect the experience of life in an increasingly complex and inter-connected digital world.

I have exhibited extensively nationally and abroad and have works in private and public collections such as the Arts Council, the Tate and Government Art Collection. As well as the editorial portrait and fashion work, I have also created two advertising campaigns for Vivienne Westwood.”