The people in this gallery are friends and colleagues whom I have met and spent time with over the past 40 years.
I am not a portrait photographer, but there are some people who I have, and would have loved to capture over the years. The surfers from Avalon Beach Sydney, who wouldn’t want to photograph them? I remember one of my first photographs back in 1991 was of Jake the surfer. To me he ticked all the boxes of what the perfect surfer should look like and I can still remember the brief I had in my head as to how I wanted the photograph to look – I asked Jake to wet his hair and mess it up. I wanted the waves in the background to be slightly out of focus and when I printed, this was done full frame with black boarders. I was really happy with the finished image and when I met Jake later that day, I gave him a copy. I will never forget the look on his face – he looked devastated. I felt like I had let him down and I was conscious I had offended him massively. I told him how good he looked, but he was not convinced.
The next time I saw Jake was around a week later and I was apprehensive thinking about our previous encounter, but to my surprise, it couldn’t have gone more differently as I was greeted with a huge smile on his face – his mum and girlfriend had seen the photograph. They really loved it, which in turn made him love it.
My experience with Jake stopped me taking photographs of people for a long time. It dawned on me in the years to come, that most people are not looking at the photograph, but just at themselves.
The Evening Standard sellers from 1989 were a part of a London College of Printing in Elephant & Castle project, which was the biggest selling newspaper in London at the time – before the mobile phone and the internet took over.
I am inspired by the brilliant photographs of Tomio Seike, one of my favourite photographers and especially the book Zoe from 1994.
