All the photography included on this Blog was shot with my 35mm Olympus OM1-n and all of the black and white photographs were hand-printed in the darkroom. I currently choose not to use digital cameras as part of my practice. I am interested in almost all forms of non-digital photography and I am very keen to explore different photographic techniques, with and without the use of a camera.

The ‘Chipped Building’ images are from a series of photos of the East End of London and feature the recurring theme of the ‘lost city’ and the strange/unsettling beauty of urban decay.  I am particularly interested in artists who travel and document the city such as Bruce Davidson and Rut Blees Luxemburg and I have been reading the books of Ian Sinclair to help me think about the idea of a journey and the importance of looking at the background elements of the city. I regularly travel London looking for places to capture long exposure night shots. What fascinates me about long-exposure night photography - and this is found in the photographs of Luxemburg and the series‘Paris’ by Brassai  - is the way the artificial light appears to be almost burnt into the photographic paper.

‘Beautiful London Collage Book’ uses the ‘found’ image. I discovered a book, called, Beautiful London in a junk shop and I cut into almost every page. Part of the time I created collages that were purposeful, but more often than not, when I cut into a page a chance collage would appear.

‘Slide projection Overlays’:uses a ‘found’ a set of 35mm slides accompanied with captions from ‘The Associated Press’ archive (dated 1975), Projecting 2 slides simultaneously, I then re-photographed the layered images. I began looking at how the media blur historical events with their coverage and how newspapers attempt to convey the essence of an event through one image. In all of this work I was interested in the quality of the collaged image and the experience of ‘seeing’ produced by cutting and superimposing and I was influenced by John Stezaker and Harry Callahan. This has led me towards working in the darkroom superimposing my own photographs .

Other photos here were taken at the recent demonstrations in London and they focus on individuals in the midst of the march.