The Seagull

Sorting through some of my old photos I came across this one, taken one weekend a few years ago. An early Summer's day trip to the English seaside, it still evokes the same feelings in me...

The Dance in Dalston is no more

23rd May 2011

The Dance in Dalston has been removed in its entirety.

Volume Magazine - Photographer of the Week

I have just been contacted by Volume Magazine who saw my work online and consequently selected me as Photographer of the Week. Random but very nice.

Old New Borrowed Blue

I took these photographs last month at two different care homes across East London, where the charity Magic Me run monthly cocktail nights for the residents.

The focus of these two particular evenings was to introduce the residents to the project Old New Borrowed Blue - a public gallery of wedding photographs through the ages - in collaboration with The Photographers' Gallery and Magic Me.

Residents were encouraged to bring along photographs from their wedding days, which they could then talk about with a group of volunteers. We gathered stories and anecdotes, I scanned the photos, and then became the start of the public gallery...

Dancing The Dance

A film made to document the posting of The Dance onto a disused billboard site in Dalston, on 8th March 2011.

Many thanks to Emma McGarry for filming and editing, and Elisa Noguera and Bara Safarova for their help on the night.

Silent Spaces

A selection of images from the ongoing series Silent Spaces

The Dance

The Dance from the project Time stands still when I think of you

The Dance was first shown in September 2010, at Gingerline, a pop-up restaurant and art space. Printed and framed (24”x30”), the image was propped up in an alcove of a converted Victorian shop, and was accompanied by a selected 1950s soundtrack. Guests were invited to sit down on a small stool to view the image, whilst listening to the music through headphones.I was interested in creating an intimate space between the viewer and the people in the image, and I wanted to bring to life the sense of celebration captured in the original photograph. In the viewer's presence and mind the people in the image were able to dance again, for the first time since the photograph was taken, approximately 60 years earlier.

I am interested in the way the context of an image affects its meaning, and how each time it is shown or reproduced the new context alters people’s reading of it.On 8th March 2011 The Dance was posted onto a disused billboard site in Dalston, London. Situated on the corner of Shacklewell Lane and Seal Street, and measuring 2.5 m x 1.5 m, it can now be seen by people walking and driving past. In terms of time, place, and society, the scene depicted in the image contrasts dramatically with the urban context that surrounds it, allowing the image to multiply itself by creating different references and meanings.

The image will remain on public display indefinitely, until defaced by others, or eroded by the elements.

Before

During

After

The Outing

The Outing from the project Time stands still when I think of you

After scanning the original a5-sized photograph (dated circa 1905), I first showed The Outing at Gingerline, a pop-up restaurant and art space, in September 2010. It was displayed as a 3m x 2m digital projection. Visible through the windows of a Victorian shop front in Crystal Palace, the shadows and movement of the people and traffic outside produced a rippling effect on the glassy surface of the water in the photograph.

Time stands still when I think of you

This project derives from an archive of over 100 family photos, the earliest of which dates from the turn of the nineteenth century. They had been discarded in a skip in Belsize Park, North London, where they were discovered by Shar Camilleri early last year.

It is a project about time. I am less concerned with the individual story behind each of the images, but more with a generic identity, that can be explored and extended according to the different experiences of everyone who sees them.

Drawing on universal feelings of loss, nostalgia, melancholy and hope, I take these photographs from their original and unknown context in the hope of creating new personal narratives, individual to each image. 


While we are all connected by our personal memories, as well as by our ability to dream, we also crave a sense of belonging, and are pre-occupied with a continual and possibly never-ending search for identity in and through the lives of others.


For a full documentation of this project click here

For Today I am a Boy

A selection of images from the series For Today I am a Boy (2008 - 2009). By asking my subjects to draw on their masculine and androgynous qualities (whether they be physical, emotional or psychological) I aim to break down gender stereotypes and highlight the unique sense of gender identity intrinsic to every one of us. It was during the period of making this work that I started exploring the historical portrayal of femininity and masculinity within portraiture, and the relationship this has to painting and photography. My later series A Modern Bohemian - which can be viewed on my website - grew out of this.