“Street Photography to what we recognise today … a documentary form that celebrated the candid public moment” Nick Turpin As a social documentary photographer you might ask, why do I use street photography techniques, in making my work. Why is it important to my practice as a photographer? Documentary photography is also a technique, which has a rich history and its own set of conventions, just like street photography does. This follows on from my last post about street photography, see here  “Street Photographers were once men that would take your picture for payment on the sidewalk, that definition changed …

An approach to making work. Documentary Style, Street Photography. I think this term ‘Documentary style street photography’ is rather good at describing how I think about my own approach to making images, for my current project on the streets of the City of London as a street photographer. In writing about Walker Evans, I happened across a piece written by J. David Sapir called Walker Evans and his’ Documentary Style’ a personal reading. I read it with interest as I had studied my MA in Photography and Urban Cultures in the Sociology department of Goldsmiths University, it resonated with me. …

Walker Evans Walker Evans was a documentary photographer, famous for working in the 1930’s his images helped to define along with Dorothea Lange what the Depression looked like in America. I originally learnt about Walker Evans as an influence on another of my heroes when I was exploring the work of Robert Frank, I came across an essay by Tod Papageorge called “An Essay on Influence” Which was a wonderful exploration of how a photographer is influenced by another. The idea that so often gets referred to in regards to Walker Evans’s early work from the 1930’s, is that he …

Some thoughts on the ethics involved in making Street Photography images. I originally started to write about my approach to street photography and before I knew it I had started on the topic of Street Photography Ethics. As it is such big and for some contentious topic, I thought it deserved its own post, so todays article is on Ethics and Street Photography. I do not have any definitive answers and this is only my opinion on the subject. I know people/writers with far more clout/knowledge than me who have written on this subject. So here goes: Up front, my position …

Exposing Neoliberalism on www.CreativeLondoners.com   I have just had an interview on my City of London social documentary/street photography project published on Creative Londoners, it is a new website writing articles/interviews about you guessed it, ‘Creative Londoners’. Oli Gudgeon started the website to write about this subject. He has already done a few interviews and I was really honoured to be asked, so without saying to much other than go check it out, and please return here to leave a comment when you have read it, as I would love to hear what you think. I got to talk about …

Panelist on Photographing the City at Street London In August this year, I was honoured to be asked by Nick Turpin of the street photography collective iN-PUBLiC to be included on a panel discussion on photographing the City of London. The panel was part of the Street Photography Symposium held at the wonderful new D&AD building in Shoreditch just off Brick Lane. The weekend was a great event put together by Martin Usborne of Hoxton Mini Press and Jason Reed the founder was back in time for the event. Both Jason Reed and Nick Turpin where the creative directors for the Street Photography Symposium  I have …

In January 2016, I started a social documentary project to photograph the City of London. This projects is ongoing and evolving over time. When I started I thought it would take me about a year to make a set of images and I would move onto something else. Part way into the project England voted for Brexit and I realised that I needed to keep going with this project. It has become apparent to me that the project has developed a life of its own and I will stop it the day that Brexit happens or Brexit is cancelled one …

What do social documentary photographers do? Or more importantly what do photographs do? If we accept that social documentary photographers are storytellers, then the photographs that we make are our stories and to make great photographs, we need to connect ambitions for our photographs with what we want to say as storytellers. It is really that simple. Yet we have a problem with photographs as there meaning is not always fixed, it is often dependent on context and the words that we use around the image. That is why newspapers don’t let images speak for themselves, as they are often …