I’ve returned to my roots, taking the time to re-examine who I am. It seems that at the core of it all not much has changed, I am passionate about pictures and curious about people’s lives.  I have a love for a story that many would consider too ordinary to bother with.

Creatively I felt that I had to look back to move forward. I re-imagined three of my Hull documentary stories from 1983; 19-year-old rag & bone man George Norris, drag artist Kandy de Barry and the drinkers in the old fisherman’s pub, the Star & Garter. I edited and mixed my archive black & white images with newly shot digital colour stills, video, audio and text. This work led to a major joint exhibition and book with documentarian George Norris titled ‘You and Me in HU3’ early 2024.

Following on with what I had learned and my experiments using a square format Rolleiflex to shoot the story ‘A Portrait of the High Street’ I continue with this pared back approach to documentary photography. I am presently working on a story about the Lea Bridge Road in London and, conscious of the throw away immediacy of colour digital photography in our era of social media, I aim to slow the ‘act of photography’. Despite the feeling that everything seems to be out there all the time on social media people are increasingly suspicious of photographers. The Rolleiflex is partly an antidote to this fear, often an opening for a conversation with a stranger and subsequently an opportunity for a picture. I like to think of this opening as ‘negotiated space’ in which a picture can be taken, a conversation started and a new relationship formed. The start of a documentary visual journey in an ethical space.

As a bit of background, I worked at Reuters for over twenty years, first as an international news photographer based in London covering news and sport around the globe, then, based in Singapore, as Chief Photographer Asia, shaping the news coverage of a diverse region. Back in London I managed 'The Wider Image', co-ordinating and mentoring photographers globally to produce in-depth visual stories, at the same time driving picture content on Reuters Instagram and Twitter feeds. Finally, I ran the Middle East and Africa, managing a team of photographers and editors, pursuing sensitive news coverage of a turbulent and often dangerous region.

To sum it all up, I love taking pictures of people, listening to them and visually telling their stories as they would like them to be told.