Si Jubb and Ethan Parker, who won our Emerging Photographer of the Year award at this year’s AP Awards, recently spoke at our Festival of Photography: Documentary event. Previous emerging photographer award winners include Aliz Kovacs-Zoldi and Tariq Sadu. We’ll regularly be sharing the work of photographers on our website and social media – and even in the magazine – so if you are an someone who has recently started their photography journey or are a student/graduate, share your work with us at ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk

Nicholas Teo speaks with Peter Dench for this week’s feature.

When and why did you start taking photographs?

Photography was an accidental discovery in 2012, when my family bought our first DSLR. As a tech enthusiast, I was instantly hooked and began shooting in my spare time. It came naturally — the first thing I felt truly good at — and I loved every part of the process. Before long I was taking photos constantly, making short films and setting my sights on a career in the medium.

What genre do you work in?

While I don’t like to confine myself to one genre, my personal work tends to fall into what I call “documentary-fashion” — telling documentary narratives through the language and visuals of fashion. This is where I’ve found the most success. I often focus on marginalised communities — including disabled people, migrants and those experiencing mental health challenges — because I believe strongly in the power of photography as a tool for social change.

Why this genre?

It gives me the chance to tell intimate, grounded stories while retaining a sense of visual flamboyance. The process is highly collaborative — my subjects share personal stories, and together we develop visual metaphors to represent them. Behind the camera I work closely with stylists, make-up artists and set designers, offering them fragments of a subject’s story to inspire their creative decisions. The experience often feels cathartic: there’s an emotional build from first meeting, through creating together, to finally revealing the finished images. Helping people, making them feel seen and celebrated, is a huge part of why I keep returning to this approach.

Tell us about your training.

I began in filmmaking, studying at Singapore’s most established film institute, which gave me a strong technical foundation. We had access to high-end kit — I spent many evenings experimenting with an Arri Alexa — and I freelanced on productions, learning by deconstructing how shots were achieved.

After graduating, I shifted from film to photography, seeking more personal storytelling and creative freedom. I later completed a BA in Commercial Photography at Arts University Bournemouth, moving to the UK to train and work towards a career in London. With eight years’ experience already under my belt, I could build on what I knew, exploring everything from colour negative and slide film to refining narrative and socio-political awareness in my work.

Biggest obstacle?

Myself — particularly self-doubt and the challenges of neurodivergence. I live with bipolar disorder, ADHD and generalised anxiety, and in low moments I can delete work, abandon ideas or miss deadlines. While I know these thoughts aren’t true reflections of my ability, they can be hard to manage in such a competitive industry.

The flipside is that these experiences have deepened my empathy. People often feel safe opening up to me because they recognise I share some of their struggles. That trust enriches my work in ways that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Biggest influences?

Two photographers who shaped my voice are Cho Gi Seok, a Korean fashion photographer whose boundary-pushing, metaphor-rich images leave me in awe, and Haruka Sakaguchi, a Japanese-American documentarian exploring cultural identity and intergenerational trauma with intimacy and care. Both inspire me to marry technical craft with emotional truth.

Equipment?

I shoot film on a Mamiya RB67 with Sekor-C lenses and digital on a Canon R5 with 24–70mm and 100mm macro, which also doubles as a film scanner. I light with Godox strobes and Aputure LEDs, and develop film at home with a JOBO rotary processor.

Dream kit?

Honestly, I’d stick with my Mamiya RB67 — but I’d love to shoot film without worrying about cost. Rising prices have made me more precious about each frame, which can break creative flow. Large format colour film (4×5 or 8×10) is also a dream — if it were affordable, I’d use it regularly. In lighting, I’d like to work with high-output LEDs such as Aputure’s Storm XT52, which would give me greater flexibility when shooting film.

Highlight so far?

Winning Portrait of Britain has been huge. In the last two years I’ve had three images in the book, with one exhibited nationwide — seeing my work on London billboards was surreal. Another high point was being signed by Zebedee, the world’s largest inclusive talent agency, soon after graduating — a goal I hadn’t expected to reach so quickly.

Hopes for the future?

To keep pushing creative boundaries, but never lose the compassion and empathy that underpin my practice. The trust I build with subjects is central to my work, and I want that to remain true decades from now.

Dream assignment?

A documentary-fashion project in a virtual production studio — vast LED screens that display any image and emit light, like those used for The Mandalorian. This tech would give me complete control over the environment while working practically, opening limitless possibilities for the visual metaphors at the heart of my work.

Advice for aspiring photographers?

Master the technical side so it becomes second nature. Then you can focus on the people, narratives and collaborations that will set your work apart.

Current projects?

Two stand out. Chiaroscuro translates the experiences of people with bipolar disorder into fashion imagery, highlighting both the extremes and the lessons of living with the condition. Nature Finds A Way documents UK migrants, using flowers and landscapes as visual motifs for transition and adaptation.

Reaction so far?

Chiaroscuro is still finding its audience, but early reactions have been strong. Nature Finds A Way has already had success — an image won Portrait of Britain, another was shortlisted for the British Photography Awards, and one is currently through to the second round of the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize.

Inspired? See the best photography competitions to enter

Instagram: @nickneedstosleep

www.nickteo.photos

More reading:

• I think we should go back to compact cameras for this one key reason
• Is Kodak finally reaching the end of the road?
• Kodak hits back: ‘we are not going out of business!’

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“I was clearly shooting in single frame mode, with a 24 exposure mentality” Leon Neale, staff photographer at Getty Images

My first digital camera was a second-hand Nikon D1, bought while I was studying photojournalism at Sheffield College. After shooting film previously, it felt like magic to shoot a photo and have it on my laptop within moments. Recently I managed to get hold of one again and looking at the enormous battery, tiny low resolution screen and very basic buttons, was quite a shock – having had the pleasure of only using the latest gear for the last few years!

I guess I was one of the first generation to never have shot film professionally starting with The Times in 2003 so all those early years were shot on a variety of early systems.

I think the biggest challenge faced by photographers in the early years of digital was transmitting the photos. Mobile phone companies hadn’t considered that customers may want to transmit larger quantities of data at speed – every task involved inputting random codes and numbers into a bit of software called z-term to try to get a blistering 10kb/s upload speed!

I’ve always been into technology so really enjoyed the freedom that digital provided. As one of those weird people that reads the manual on a new camera, it was fascinating to come to terms with this new world. It’s hard to consider now but being able to change your ISO during a shoot was groundbreaking.

Boy – there were some stinkers in those first few years!

As digital was such a new technology, I sadly jumped into buying a few cameras without letting the reviews come in first. Boy – there were some stinkers in those first few years! Now, people will grumble if there are slight issues with elements of the menu system, but they should remember that the early cameras had upper ISO limits of 640 ISO and hideous magenta colour casts to every frame!

File size was something to consider too. Now, I can crop into the tiniest elements of a frame but loading these example frames up, the full resolution is less than 2000 pixels. It’s amazing how quickly we forget  Looking back at my full output from jobs, I was still clearly in the film mindset. In total, I was coming away from pretty big jobs with maybe 20 frames. Crazy! I know we didn’t have the ridiculous frame rates of today but I was clearly shooting in single frame mode, with a 24 exposure mentality. Alongside getting used to the ISO variable, being able to shoot hundreds of images was clearly another new thing to consider!

“The biggest challenges were processing digital files correctly and having enough bandwidth to transmit them” Nick Danziger, photographer, filmmaker and travel writer

I’ve had a relationship with Olympus cameras for decades. As soon as I showed interest in a new model, they’d ship it to me. The first I used professionally was the E-1. I only went digital because I saw that’s where the future was heading, even if at first I was disappointed with the resolution compared to film and transparencies.

One of my early digital commissions was from NEWSWEEK, during John Kerry’s 2004 US Presidential campaign. I was also shooting Kodak Tri-X 400, so I had a lot to carry around the nearly 50 states we visited – sometimes three in a day. Digital came into its own – I could transmit images in minutes, while the black-and-white film had to be shipped to New York, processed, and made into contact sheets. During the campaign, Canon in the Netherlands lent me all the equipment I needed, as their digital gear was ahead of the rest at the time.

Whenever I received a new camera, I’d test the settings by photographing my kids at home – and instantly see results on screen. Over the years, Olympus kept me supplied with their latest models as technology advanced.

Initially, the biggest challenges were processing digital files correctly and having enough bandwidth to transmit them to photo desks. In remote areas like the Pamir in Afghanistan or the Afar region of Ethiopia, I stuck with film – there was often nowhere to charge batteries. But picture desks increasingly insisted on digital to cut costs, ignoring the time needed to process the files.

I do think digital has made many photographers lazy

At first, I felt completely outside my comfort zone. For me, it’s all about framing and being ‘in the zone’ – the camera an extension of my body. I could change settings on my SLR without looking. Like a plumber or electrician, it’s not the tools but the skill that matters. But when the tools change, you need time to learn what they can really do. Honestly, I felt very uncomfortable with digital at first. But unlike film, you don’t return from weeks of shooting unsure if your shutter worked or whether you got a decent, correctly exposed shot.

I do think digital has made many photographers lazy. With just 36 frames on a roll and costly processing, framing and timing had to be precise. You were in the zone – not distracted by checking the back screen to see if you got it right. So often the key moment is missed because your eye left the viewfinder – yes, I still use one! Each photo is a canvas, never to be cropped. Film gave you that rigour.

“Sensor cleaning was terrifying back then” Jenny Lewis, portrait and documentary photographer often focusing on long-term projects

God, I’ve got no bloody idea what my first digital camera was called. It was a Canon, around 2005—probably a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II I think.

At first, all the picture editors were saying, “It’s fine, you can carry on shooting film.” Then, overnight, they were like, “We’re only accepting digital, okay?” The whole landscape changed. And it’s not like you got paid more – same fee, but nothing for processing or printing.

I can’t remember if I played with digital before using it on a commission, but I do remember a cover shoot with Thandie Newton. My childminder let me down that morning. Total chaos. Hair and makeup going on, 300 frocks lined up, I had a very specific brief to get the hair and make up tools in the shot and having a cuppa – I didn’t have the freedom to shoot her as I would have liked.

I looked at the screen and thought, something’s wrong – turned to my assistant and asked, “Why do the pictures look off?” But I had to pretend everything was fine. He checks and goes, “They’re all JPEGs.” I’m like, “What? Oh my God.” I told everyone I was just adjusting the lighting while he frantically tried to fix the settings. We think the camera must’ve reverted to factory settings after a sensor clean.

We were learning on really high-pressure shoots

Sensor cleaning was terrifying back then. You didn’t touch it—you sent it off. The cameras were still so new, and you didn’t want to start fiddling with menus on a big job. You weren’t even sure what you were changing. Looking back, it’s awful—we were learning on really high-pressure shoots. The assistants were starting from scratch – I couldn’t rely on their knowledge.

The shift to digital came at a huge moment for me. I was juggling motherhood and commercial work. Everything I knew about photography was film. I’d been a printer. I loved – felt confident in that world. Then suddenly, it was all gone. You had to adapt to survive.

Letting go of film was painful – like losing your love of photography. There were advantages. With small kids, I didn’t have time to be in the lab. I could shoot, go home, and edit in the evening. It would still be on the editor’s desk by morning. That gave me freedom.

Creatively, it changed everything. I wouldn’t have done long-form projects if I’d had to pay for film – too expensive. Digital let me go deep – I could keep working on something for years, because the only cost was time.

That shift took me from editorial into book-making. It opened everything up, redefined my practice.

“I had no clue about colour balance to begin with” Alys Tomlinson, photographic artist working mostly in black & white analogue on a large-format camera

My first digital camera was a Canon EOS 20D with a 24-70mm lens (I think!). I used to shoot a lot for Time Out travel guides and went from using black and white film and colour transparency, to digital. It completely changed my workflow – I had to adapt quickly. It felt like overnight, nearly all commissioned work required digital. Some of my first digital shots were for travel guides to Miami, Venice, Naples and Copenhagen.

I had no clue about colour balance to begin with and had to teach myself post-production with a ‘Photoshop and Lightroom for Dummies’ book. It sent me into a panic. I remember the Picture Editor at Time Out saying that other photographers were struggling with the change to digital and loads of the images had a yellow or orange tinge. I also had no idea that cards needed formatting at first, so got into a bit of a muddle! Shooting digitally felt alien, complicated, and overwhelming at first. It was strange when people asked to see the photos immediately on the back of the camera, I felt like hiding the screen away. I liked the protection that film offered – I didn’t require or want people to comment on the images, especially before they’d had any treatment or post-production.

The cost of investing in new kit also seemed excessive

Initially, I was terrified as it felt like a completely different way of working, plus, I missed my time hanging out eating biscuits at Metro lab and the anticipation and excitement of getting film back. It felt like I was abandoning my craft and starting again. The cost of investing in new kit also seemed excessive – it was a reluctant move to digital.

The editing and downloading time required long days and clients demanded a very fast turnaround. I was often up until 2am in dingy hotel rooms, desperately responding to emails and finishing jobs. Digital did make it much easier in different lighting situations – with film, I was either using filters or moving between tungsten and daylight film and having to decide in advance on different film speeds.

I would tell myself not to get too anxious – to have more confidence in my ability to learn new skills.

I remember thinking my career was over when the industry switched to digital, but now I’m able to easily alternate between digital and film. Today, most of my commercial work is digital and my personal work is film. I still feel like a digital luddite, and I outsource any sophisticated retouching or high-end post work. I’ve moved on from the 20D! I used Canon 5Ds for years and recently bought a second-hand Fuji GFX medium format as part of a kit share with another photographer.

“Anything above ISO 800 was like painting with sand” Peter Dench, photographer and AP acting features editor

The once-in-a-lifetime commission came down to two candidates and one question: do you shoot digital? The other photographer said no – they preferred film on a Leica. Sensing the room, I said yes. I got the job.

It was 2007. For over a decade I’d shot almost exclusively on medium format film – Mamiya 6 and 7. I was nearly convinced my style could translate to digital. This was the nudge I needed.

After the meeting, I called my mate Marcus Bleasdale to ask what camera system to buy. A few weeks later, I rang again for help navigating the menus and settings of my new Canon EOS 5D (and a spare). Released in 2005, it was a landmark: the first relatively affordable full-frame DSLR. A revelation at the time.

I lazily thought I’d learn on the job

Football’s Hidden Stories would explore the global reach and social impact of the beautiful game, far from the professional spotlight – 26 stories across 22 countries in 15 months. From refugee camps to war zones, remote villages to inner-city streets, it captured how football is played, loved, and lived in the most unexpected places. I lazily thought I’d learn on the job. The first trip took me to the barrios marginales of Bogotá and Cartagena. I remember the moment I felt I’d taken a good digital photo – a lad sat on a wall cleaning his boots next to a soldier – looking at it now it’s soft!

Looking back, anything above ISO 800 was like painting with sand. In low light, noise came fast, and detail fell off a cliff. Today’s ISO 3200 looks like ISO 400 did then. The rear LCD was tiny – 2.5 inches – and not much help for judging focus or exposure. No proper zoom-in, no live view. You chimped – and guessed.

The 5D was a brick by modern standards – no flip screen, no touchscreen, no custom modes. But I learned fast. The reportage went on to win six global accolades. Not a bad start.

“By the end of the first morning I was deleting the least worst files!” Gavin Hoey, freelance photographer and photographic educator

For me digital photography started shortly after my daughter was born and my cherished darkroom became a nursery. I don’t recall how I settled upon the Olympus C-2020 Z for my first digital camera back in 1999, but I do remember it being a revelation. Colour images that I could see instantly, edit in Paint Shop Pro and print out within an hour! I sold ALL my darkroom gear almost immediately.

The little 2 million pixel camera got me my first paid job in publishing. I managed to talk my way into a freelance job writing ‘how to’ articles for the late, great Digital Photo Magazine and the C-2020 Z was responsible for capturing all of the images I used in the tutorials. It wasn’t until several years later, when the magazine editor brought in a rule for freelancers that insisted on images greater than 4 megapixels, that I upgraded from the Olympus compact to a Fuji bridge camera.

I started out as the butt of jokes

I found the switch from film to digital to be a really smooth experience in every way except one. I can still vividly remember my first proper trip out with the 2mp 2020Z. It was a city break to Venice, I splashed out on a 32MB (note, not GB) SmartMedia card which gave me roughly the equivalent of 3 or 4 rolls of fill. Back when I paid pre photo with film, that would have been plenty but with digital… by the end of the first morning I was deleting the least worst files!

The early days of digital cameras were wild. I can still recall being at a camera club workshop where everyone had film cameras except me. I started out as the butt of jokes until I showed them my photos on the tiny 1.5” LCD and then I branded a cheat… happy days!

“There was just so much more to carry—wires, chargers, extra bags” Jon Nicholson, photographer with a career of 40 years, who travels globally working on long-term projects

I think my first digital camera was an Olympus CL1400—or something like that. I steered clear of digital for as long as I could, only really embracing it around 2003. That year, I started using the Olympus E-1 system for a three-year commission with Ferrari F1. Quite a leap, considering I was deeply suspicious of the whole digital movement.

Early on, it just felt too slow, especially when shooting action. I found it really underwhelming. The short lens stuff was manageable, and I have to say, the files were surprisingly good—especially the reds, which Ferrari were very particular about. It was a great lesson that file size isn’t everything; we produced some huge prints that looked fantastic.

I didn’t really start enjoying digital photography until I got into the Nikon D3 series

Still, I couldn’t quite believe we were going down this digital path. There was just so much more to carry—wires, chargers, extra bags. It all felt like a step backwards in some ways. I didn’t really start enjoying digital photography until I got into the Nikon D3 series—D3, D3s, D3X—and eventually the Leica M9, M10, and the Monochroms. But even then, the files started getting too sharp for my taste, which is part of why I’ve gone back entirely to film.

That said, I did fully embrace digital while I was using it and shot some really interesting stories for major magazines. If I could go back and give myself some advice, I’d say: stick to what you know, shoot less, and don’t edit unless absolutely necessary—like when working for newspapers. And don’t get seduced by tech. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was walking into Adorama in New York in 2005 and trading in three Leica M6s for a Canon 5D and a couple of lenses. I walked out of the shop knowing I’d made a huge error—only to be followed down the street by a guy yelling, “You fool, what have you done?!”

He was right. 

“The buffer was so slow and the zoom so sluggish” Jocelyn Bain Hogg, documentary photographer and educator

I’d only used borrowed digital Canon and Epson RD cameras once before—at the 2005 Cannes Festival, shooting for Le Monde. I learned their quirks on the fly. But the real test came later that year when Kodak asked me to trial a new prototype – Kodak P880 Zoom digital camera. They’d pioneered the digital SLR chip, and back then were seen as innovators, changing photography forever.

This was a factory-fresh hybrid point-and-shoot with a razor-sharp Schneider lens—top of the range, all singing, all dancing for its time. I took it to the Visa Pour L’Image festival in Perpignan that September, where we were staying in a plush house with palm trees, tropical plants and a tortoise that roamed the garden.

ISO capped at 400

Keen to test it out, I fiddled with the diddy buttons—‘fine’ JPEG was the best it offered (8MB, no Raw), ISO capped at 400, and a 4:3 aspect ratio. I set up, lined up the tortoise… and missed the shot. The buffer was so slow and the zoom so sluggish that by the time it focused, the tortoise had wandered out of frame. So much for Kodak’s old slogan: You press the button, we do the rest.

Still, I took it on holiday to Mani in Greece, inspired by Patrick Leigh Fermor. By then, I knew not to shoot anything that moved. I’d promised Kodak a proper run before writing it off—and my pride was on the line.

The lens was its saving grace: detailed, sharp, and decent close up. On a deserted Peloponnesian beach, I photographed my partner, drawing on my fashion days. It was a learning curve in digital.

Hard to believe this was once state of the art—and how far we’ve come. Kodak, once a giant, has all but vanished from photography. But one print from that trip—a “20×30” black and white, beautifully printed by Metro in London—still hangs on my wall. So it wasn’t all bad.

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Si Jubb is a British photographer, whose work blends an observational documentary style with a distinct sense of place, wit and social nuance. Rooted in everyday life, his images explore the quietly surreal and tender moments that often go unnoticed. Although growing up in a photographic family, his photographic work started in earnest in 2017, living in and shooting the seaside town of Weymouth along with projects further afield. 

Together with his own photographs, he is a hunter and restorer of found negatives and slides, which resulted in a feature for the Guardian during covid, leading to zines with publisher Bump Books. His work has featured in The FT, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and national magazines.

When and why did you start taking photographs?

Photography’s always been part of my life. Growing up, we documented everything—birthdays, everyday oddities, Christmas head-and-shoulders portraits. I had a camera before I stopped believing in Father Christmas. I remember taking ‘portraits’ of classmates on the last day of infant school and later, at a family friend’s wedding, photographing the photographer rather than the posed shots. That was more interesting to me.

In my teens I used a Praktica EE2 and began learning about exposure and lenses, but the wait for film processing slowed my learning. Music ended up taking over—I studied it at university and fronted an indie band called Jubb & The Dirty Sleeves. Later, I was asked to model for a soil company campaign shot by editorial photographer Adrian Sherratt. That shoot reignited my love for photography. Adrian took me under his wing and I started assisting on portrait jobs. That was eight years ago, and digital cameras gave me the instant feedback I’d always missed. I’ve always enjoyed collecting interesting moments.

Which genre do you tend to work mostly in?

Documentary photography. If I do portraiture, I prefer environmental setups—something with context or interaction between the subject and surroundings. I mostly shoot in colour, though in low light I’ll switch to black and white or use flash sparingly if I need to.

What draws you to documentary photography?

There’s a unique, never-happens-again magic to it. I’ve never had the patience for setting up shots and small talk. Candid wins every time.

Any formal training?

Not formally, no. But my Nanna and uncle instilled a lot—framing, lens choice, flash use. I’ve self-educated by absorbing the work of great photographers and cutting out favourite images from The New York Times for scrapbooks. A postgrad course would be great if the stars align, but for now, I’m setting my own homework.

Biggest photographic obstacle?

Imposter syndrome and worrying what people think when I shoot in public. But if the shot’s worth it, instinct takes over. As soon as my eye’s in the viewfinder, I tune everything else out.

Who or what are your biggest influences?

I blend influences from photography, painting, and film. Edward Hopper is top-tier for people in landscapes. I’ve gone through a Caravaggio phase—obsessed with light and pose. Pop Art, Stanley Kubrick’s wide-angle cinematography, and Martin Parr have also shaped how I see the world. I think in wide angles, probably from skateboard videos or my glasses prescription.

What gear do you use?

I started seriously in 2017 with a Fujifilm X100F—small, unassuming, great lens. I’ve used various Sonys, Minolta lenses, film cameras like the Canon A35F and some medium format cameras. But film got too expensive, and a lab once lost two rolls from a paid job—game over.

Now I shoot exclusively Fuji digital: the X100VI with its built-in 35mm-equivalent lens and adaptor for 28mm, plus an X-T3 with a 50mm equivalent and an ultra-wide Nisi 13.5mm. I use Nissin flashes (i40, i60, Di700) and sometimes a Rayflash ring flash , occasionally off camera flash for that dramatic, baroque-esque look. If caught without a camera, I’ll even shoot RAW on my phone.

Tell us about your current project

I’ve just released Weymouth, my third zine with Bump Books. It’s a personal one—Weymouth is where I grew up so it felt right to create something that captures the spirit of a place that’s shaped me so much.

Dream equipment?

I’ve got all I need, really. Though I’d love a TTL ring flash compatible with Fuji—everyone else seems to have one.

Highlight so far?

Having self assignment photos of mine published in The Guardian & Sunday Times as part of their coverage of the Oasis reunion tour. The biggest gig in the world was happening within walking distance of my house that day, so I thought it was a good idea to go for a wander with my camera.

Hopes for the future?

I’m not trying to push a message or make grand statements. I shoot things I think would make a good photograph. I hope one day the work will reveal its message on its own. Until then, I’m happy doing what I do—no overthinking.

Dream assignment?

To document the behind-the-scenes life of a Bob Dylan tour for The New York Times Magazine—with a focus on the fans and the realities of life on the road. If anyone reading this can help, don’t be shy.

Advice for emerging photographers?

Ignore the urge to chase likes or spend a fortune on new gear to feel ‘legit’. Also, don’t not read Amateur Photographer weekly (wink). Jokes aside, I found the British Museum a great place to practise—everyone’s too busy looking at exhibits to notice you taking photos.

If you’re doing a course, make the most of it every day. You won’t get that time back.

Si will be joining us on Saturday 9 August at Festival of Photography: Documentary to talk on his previous and future projects, plus his methods and motives for documenting the familiar and celebrating the quirkiness of modern life. Save 25% now – Get your tickets here!

More reading:

• Street Life: UK EISA Maestro winners revealed!
• Attention Fujifilm fans: ‘Fujikina’ coming to London in September
• Top portraits revealed in major international competition!

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In the latest book, “Streets of America”, Chris took on the impressive feat of visiting 23 cities in an 80 day coast-to-coast adventure. As such, there’s San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Boston, Philadelphia and many more to take in.

With a tenacity that is rare to find for this kind of work, there’s hundreds of images published in the book, and I’m pleased that Chris has shared a selection with us here. 

I also asked him to share some insights into how he works – I’m exhausted just reading about his days pounding the streets in search of the perfect shot, but it does show that perseverance truly pays off.

In this year of the new Trump era beginning, and a very divided nation, there’s potentially never been more attention focused on our friends in the States, but on the whole this is a very positive book. Read on to find out more… 

AP: How did you decide which cities you wanted to include in your tour?

CP: When asked why he stole from banks, the notorious American robber Willie Sutton retorted, ‘because that’s where the money is’! So, like most street photographers I headed for the big cities and I was also influenced by popular culture as seen on TV and Hollywood. Having watched ‘Breaking Bad’ I checked out Albuquerque and Santa Fe on Route 66, but was disappointed as it was a quiet day with few characters about. A local online travel counsellor who knew America well, helped me plan with a very flexible itinerary. She would book some flights and hotels in advance of my next city, so avoiding dodgy areas and saving me from wandering the streets with a heavy rucksack late at night.  

AP: Were there any places you didn’t go to but wished you had?

CP: Inevitably in such a vast country my project was just a snapshot, but with hindsight there definitely was. Places such as El Paso on the Texas and Mexico border to try and reflect that centre of political controversy, for example. I also wanted to capture some of the election campaigning, but on my first visit in the spring of 2023, it was just warming up. However, in April 2024 I did witness pro and anti Trump protesters clashing outside the Supreme Court in Washington. I wish I had gone into the rural heartlands and swing States and also Miami but I ran out of time and money. I needed a year to do the project any sort of justice… perhaps I should have gone to Niagara Falls but reckoned I would just get soaked or, perhaps at Grand Canyon where I might see a few tourists admiring the view.

AP: What were your highlights? Will you be going back to any of them? 

CP: I wanted to see more of the old America, so Fort Worth in Texas was perfect with its cowboys but unfortunately no rodeo. However, an added bonus was capturing a crowd gazing up at a total eclipse of the sun. 

In spring 2023 I went for 50 days including Las Vegas where I just couldn’t get my mojo working in a search for some tacky Parr-esque images. I am glad I returned a year later for an extra 30 days and was rewarded by snapping a very drunk Elvis in a buggy on an escalator.

I loved Nashville – it was packed and buzzing with music filling the streets. But it was sadly marred by another mass shooting close by. Then an amazing coincidence happened while waiting for an Uber outside my hotel. A couple asked where I was from and on replying “Peterborough”, a man in the queue said he was too and that I had taken his picture 40 years ago and again in 2022 for my Reunions 2 book.

It was important that I reflected the national obsession with baseball which was not easy as some stadiums banned ‘professional-looking cameras or longer lenses, although ironically camera phones were not a problem. Fortunately, I managed to capture games in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

The poignant Washington Vietnam war memorial where I saw relatives searching amongst the 50,000 names for their loved ones. Nearby, the impressive Martin Luther King sculpture brought to mind ‘I have dream’  and the long struggle for civil rights. My image of two children in Baltimore holding hands sums it up for me. That night I was asleep in my hotel while around the corner six people were injured in a nightclub shooting. 

Walking miles around a baking hot and tourist-packed Washington, I spotted a lone police officer guarding the steps of the Capitol building, cocooned in sheets and scaffolding. As I reflected on the attempted coup of January 6th 2021 a genial man and gun owner informed me the attack was all staged by the FBI and that the Sandy Hook school shootings was the work of paid actors!

Not exactly a highlight but just as memorable was in New York and just before my night flight home, when I ran after a dog wearing a pink tutu and went flying. Cradling my ‘baby’, I landed smack on my jaw in a square of hard mud where a tree had once grown. I was lucky that I managed to avoid using the American health system and the dental damage could wait until my beloved NHS sorted me out. To add insult to injury, I missed the picture too!  

At almost 72 I will probably not return and there’s plenty in dear old Blighty to keep me busy. 

AP: Did you find that the cities had lots in common, or were they all quite different? 

CP: New York ‘the city that never sleeps’ is a street photographer’s paradise where you are spoiled for choice with great characters and backdrops. In other big cities, such as Dallas or Detroit I found the same kind of photography particularly hard as the car is king. The cities are devoted to massive multi-storey and subterranean car parks, valet parking, wide roads and pavements that are devoid of people in some dystopian concrete jungle. Noxious fumes belched from enormous tank like vehicles with their drivers concealed behind darkened glass. Most buildings were also obscured, and it is only on opening a door you realise what’s inside and where all the people were. I walked miles through litter-strewn streets unsuccessfully trying to avoid human excrement; passing by shop security guards armed with guns and tasers.

I didn’t want to overdo images of the dispossessed but I had to reflect what I was seeing in front of me. I was saddened to witness the shocking effects of the opioid crisis on fellow human beings. Like scenes from a zombie movie they staggered around, ranting and raving, lying comatose in doorways and gutters, rags hanging off them, exposing festering sores on oedematous limbs. These scenes were replicated in other cities such as Hollywood with tents on sidewalks alongside the red carpets of Oscar night. In the US, there’s simply no safety net. In Britain, we have problems but fortunately we still have a welfare state and it shows. 

AP: How do you find the streets of the US compare with the streets of the UK and Europe? 

CP: In 2023, I landed in San Francisco to an inauspicious start. On a filthy graffiti-covered airport shuttle train to downtown, a man sat behind me shouting, ‘I want to stab something.’ Then, with a large pair of red scissors, he destroyed his seat. Camera-in-hand I was tempted, but took my cue from sensible locals who had already moved to the next carriage to await the police. Our tube feels safe and pristine by comparison. 

I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations but there are stark contrasts to some of the US cities. In Europe, it’s probably why Venice is one of my favourites – simply because of the refreshing absence of cars.

AP: You say you don’t know necessarily what it is you’re looking for when you go out – but are you going out looking for “moments” or do you just see if you get lucky? 

CP: You do make your own luck and street photography is about walking many miles and letting serendipity play its role. As with my multi coloured punks from the eighties, I still look out for characters who stand out from the madding crowd and humorous juxtapositions and interactions that are often missed. A bit like fishing where I would walk all day without a bite, tired and despondent and about to go home when suddenly, out of the blue, on walks Philly Man who was made for the front cover!

AP: How long do you spend each day (roughly) walking around waiting for something to catch your eye? Do you tend to stay in one place and let action unfold in front of you or do you approach it differently?

CP: “All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.” So I wait and wait, and if no joy I find another stage. How do you capture those iconic places that have been photographed millions of times in a different way? For me, it is about finding the right character to match.

I probably spend a minimum of twelve hours walking up to twenty miles hunting for that decisive and elusive moment. In fact, I walked over seven hundred miles, along with thousands of miles on slow infrequent Amtrak trains, Greyhound coaches and inevitably planes to save time 

AP: Did people mind you photographing? Do you think you have a different viewpoint/vantage point as an outsider, compared to say when you’re photographing in the UK?

CP: I get into lost tourist mode, and not being a street photography purist I do a mixture of candid and engagement. In fact, I often provoke eye contact as it usually produces a stronger picture. Worry about the response from strangers is the main reason given for not pursuing street photography but I have rarely had problems. Most are flattered and I find a smile and an explanation goes a long way.

AP: Can you tell us about the gear that you use? 

CP: In the eighties, I was a bit shyer, so I did some telephoto work but I now realise the social context such as the shops is crucial. I try to adopt the maxim of one of my photojournalist heroes, Robert Capa: “If your photograph is not good enough, then you are not close enough.” Tragically he got too close in Indochina! I use a Canon 5D Mark III and EF 24 – 70 mm f/2.8 L USM lens. I thought getting a compact Fuji X100 would make me a less conspicuous, a better photographer and produce better images. It didn’t!  

I must admit, when I walk around town, I rarely take the heavy gear now except for projects like my American trip. I was a bit sniffy about mobile phones and despite the limitations of no viewfinder and overriding settings, I am beginning to appreciate the advantages. The quality is so good with raw shooting available too and its always with you.  

AP: Do you tend to shoot in one particular mode? 

CP: My former career as a paramedic taught me to be always ready to respond immediately to the unexpected. To seize the moment before it has gone. So it is with street photography and why my best shot ever was in Union Square New York of a leaping collie dog. I actually shot from my chest and would have been gutted had it been blurred or out of focus.

My camera is always set on aperture priority at a fast shutter speed and small aperture. Say a minimum of about  800 -1000 sec at around f8 or more. The lens is usually at the 24 -28 end and I use my feet as a zoom. I move around the subject as great potential pictures are usually ruined by messy backgrounds that ruin your composition with sticking out limbs and polybags. 

I use manual ISO, upping it if needed as it’s better to have a bit of noise than a blurred image. It’s crucial to have a filter on to protect the lens and sometimes a lens hood, although being careful of vignetting when it slips. Always check for raindrops, as I find they will always end up in middle of the face!  Focus points I often set at max for quick grab shots of general crowds and individual points for more precision. 

Additionally, I shoot on rapid burst mode too with raw and jpegs. Shooting sometimes from crazy angles to give impact, I avoid harsh sunlight by walking on the shady side of the street. I’m constantly scanning the horizon and rechecking settings as somehow they move! I always carry spare charged batteries and memory cards, comfy shoes, rucksack with sarnies and water plus protective gear. 

It’s no good being a fair-weather photographer as the best shots are to be had where others fear to tread. Again, my old career comes into play with dangers first and watching your back. Avoiding dodgy ill lit alleys and dead ends. 

AP: Do you do any post-production to the pictures? 

CP: I am a bit of a technophobe (my age) so have to keep it basic. There’s no substitute for getting it right first time in camera, rather than roll it in glitter later. I learned more from the Sunday Times picture editor  Harold Evans seminal work ‘Pictures on a Page’ than any other photo book. Just simple cropping for instance can make such a difference to those grab shots. I see a potential picture and get a few in the can just in case and then wait for things to develop and maybe a better picture will emerge.

AP: Have you gotten any better at editing your own work? 

CP: Fortunately I had a little bit of help from my friends with constructive critique from a great mentor and former photo editor. He would look at my images and say rubbish, boring, so what, leaves me cold, delete, delete, delete! As I could not find a publisher, I was very lucky to find a great graphic designer who makes my photographs sing in the books and also distributes them for me too.

I am slowly learning that less is more and that viewers get bored with too many similar pictures which will dilute your strong ones. Sometimes just one strong picture can tell the story.

Unlike my early books, I have tried to curate more tightly and resisted the temptation to justify and include weaker images. For example, I walked around St Louis for two days without a decent picture so the city does not feature. Likewise, despite all the expense and effort to capture the iconic Golden Gate, I left empty handed. As you do with digital I took thousands of images but deleted the vast majority as they were technically poor or just boring. 

AP: What’s been the reaction to this book? 

CP: Despite the compromises I am pleased with the outcome and the print quality is great. The man featured sitting on the White House Wall holding a placard with ‘Hate will not make America Great’ is a retired Washington professor in his eighties. Frustrated with Trump, he has protested there most days for five years and upset with the result he has now returned to his vigil in winter. I asked him what he thought after receiving my book. He loved it but did not feel it reflected the very divided and angry America that he sees and feels. He has a point, but I replied that I hope it also shows a more positive and happier side of his country and what can be.  

The problem is the book at £15 is cheap enough, but it costs an extra £35 to send it to the States. So apart from to those who are actually in the book, I have sold very few there. Here in the UK, it is still quite niche although very topical. I hope this feature will appeal to AP readers who might then want to see more of my quirky take on America. It’s all for a good cause too, as part of the proceeds goes to Breast Cancer Research in memory of Lesley, the love of my life for fifty years.

AP: You’ve said that this is going to be your last book – why is that? 

CP: Along with just published Barking 2! (inspired by Elliot Erwitt) I have self-published ten books now. I do not have time for another Reunions project as I would be over a century, although cameras can be mounted to Zimmer frames! There is no substitute for the smell and feel of a photography book compared to a screen but they are very expensive to produce and time consuming to make.  

Never say never, but I feel it’s time for a different direction as I have honed my craft on the streets and now find street photography lacks purpose for me. I enjoy social documentary-type work, such as my NHS book homage ‘Just Be Kind’ which covers my forty seven year career. My then and now Reunions exhibition based on my two books proved very popular and was attended by over 11,000 in Peterborough. I have tried to garner London interest, but sadly to no avail. Hopefully one day, but not posthumously as you cannot read the reviews…. 

Commissions and projects perhaps such as the one at London Luton airport displaying my images over the past seven years, which enabled me to buy a decent camera. So any offers of expenses paid trips back to Europe or even America would be welcome while my legs and brain still work! Seize the moment!    

Streets of America is available to buy now. You can buy a copy for just £20 including postage (to the UK) by visiting chrisporsz.com. Barking 2! Is also available, priced at £13 including postage.

Related reading:

• Tips for striking street photography
• Chris Porsz: the inside story of the amazing street photography project ‘Reunions’
• How to set up your camera for street photography

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In 2022, I was beginning a project photographing journalists. At the time, the UK had one in a maximum-security prison, and another as Prime Minister. Whilst the numbers differ, 2022 saw a sharp rise in violence against journalists and media workers. War in Ukraine was the first full-scale war in Europe since WW2, and it was just so accessible… My return flights were just £40!

But how do you prepare an influx of ordinary writers for kidnapping, explosives, and war-torn environments? Hostile Environment Training (sometimes known as HEFAT, HEAT, HETC, HETT, or HET) is the health and safety course for journalists working in war zones. I reached out to Hostile Environment Training Ltd, which runs at least two multi-day workshops twice a week, every week (apart from Christmas), to explore and photograph their operations. 

While it’s critical that more people understand the need for HET courses, especially for freelancers currently eyeing those £40 tickets to Ukraine, the team are a bit concerned – I’m a young woman from London, an artist no less. I reassure them by talking about my brothers – two farmers, used to bad weather and the facts of life. They let me come along. 

I arrive (at a location I’ve been asked not to identify), and they look me up and down. I was to be on the side of the militia. While the training starts off with some PowerPoints and seminars, a series of surprise attacks are due…

My new militia friends are lovely. We’re sat in an office as they fill out paperwork, hold their team meeting, and efficiently pack their props for the day – a large arsenal of guns, explosives, and blow torches, but most interestingly a wardrobe of costumes. The militia think my use of flash is great, and it is added to the rhythm of the torture which is to come. It was reassuring to know that if these journalists were going into real war zones, intruding on the lives of real victims, they were going to know what it felt like.

A bit later, I’m sat at the edge of a demonstration of IEDs, a short history, ‘They used to work like this, now this is more popular, in this region this is the trend…’ I’m hiding behind a bridge, on the ground, with some camo thrown over me. 

I’m waiting for a large explosion. Very large. The militia are all eager for me to capture this, but I instead recall some advice from Simon Roberts – ‘turn around’. I slither along the floor, I’m almost under the table containing the prop IEDs, my camera is on the faces of the journos scribbling notes.

BOOM.

The shot I get is sad. They’re illuminated in this putrid orange, some look confused, others are still taking notes. If this was a genuine attack, this is the banal final moments of their lives. Over in less than 1/125, no time for a final sign-off. Their story just gets cut off.

The rest of my militia are busy. Many who run the course are ex-armed forces, missing limbs. They’ve discarded their legs and arms, covered themselves in blood, and have thrown themselves onto the wooded path in front of the journos. One ‘victim’ looks like a pair of tights full of jelly – his eyes are bulging, his knuckles are white, he’s pleading for help whilst blood squirts and leaks. His scream is so foreboding and unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. But he has.

It’s been a long day for these journalists already, but this marks the beginning of the crescendo of the training. Another wave of the militia are on them. The journalists’ hands are tied, and they have bags and blindfolds slung over their heads. This is how they’ll be for the next several hours. 

They’re dragged and marched to a small shed, and the torture begins. I won’t give away all the tactics – we are sworn by the militia brotherhood – but there is one particular interrogation I remember.

‘Why are you here?! What do you do?! You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Taking pictures?! What you gonna say about this?!’

‘No, I’m not a journalist!’

‘You’re not a journalist?’

‘I shoot reportage!’

The militia interrogator didn’t even pause, ‘What the F— is reportage?!’

In negotiations with kidnappers, apparently, it’s not the best time to argue for the subtle nuances between reportage and photojournalism. 

My photos, on the other hand, sit in a bizarre uncanny valley. The hoods can’t help but mimic the shocking photos of the very real Abu Ghraib, but the clean, super-bright artificial light (the Profoto A1) confuses things. Flash is loud, and intrusive, it is near-impossible to use in a war zone, however I’ve had many people think these photos are of a real torture scene. I must have just gained the trust of a real militia. 

From Larry Fink to Martin Hartley, in order to shoot images you can’t be scared or intimidated by your surroundings. This applies for all good photography. You want your wedding photographer to push your second-cousin out the way of your ‘first kiss’ shot, not be hiding at the back of the room. Since this shoot, I’ve taken on many more ‘scary’ subjects and stories – from big stars with big egos, to Russian nazis hiding from the law. I like to think of myself as ‘The Access Queen’. But you’re only deserving of that spot if you have the right knowledge of your surroundings, and can look after yourself. 

The Ukraine invasion happened in February; by March there were no bulletproof flak jackets available from any UK distributor. Many people, looking for their own Robert Capa adventure, felt that just slinging on a jacket would make them ready to report, but they’re missing a critical piece of the
puzzle. A bulletproof flak jacket on its own isn’t going to give you the results you want.

I loved my time at the HET camp. There are very few things which are fun, important, and have a positive impact on both those attending, and running the course. These ex-armed forces members continue to use their hard-earned experience in the field. Meanwhile, we get high-quality journalism from some of the most desperate and at-risk areas in the world, and keep those who are reporting safe(r) so the only thing they miss is a trip to the pub. 

Jennifer Forward-Hayter is a photographer who focuses on documentary and social performance. She is based in London and Dorset. See more work at jenniferforwardhayter.co.uk

Related reading:

• Are citizen journalists killing reportage?
• Honouring the wartime photography of Lee Miller

Follow AP on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

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‘I had the idea in my mind for ages, years. It could only work because of the COVID situation because nobody was around. There were no entertainers and no visits by family members. This meant that I was never going to be disturbed.’ It could be the beginning of a confession to a crime but is in fact much more thrilling. I meet Robert Speker (pronounced Speaker) in a comfy pistachio coloured sunlit room on a Sunday morning at the Sydmar Lodge Care Home in Edgware, north London.

He’s sitting with a straight back in a low chair, neatly presented in a checked shirt and dark chinos, smart watch around the wrist. Care home staples are dotted around us; water jugs and beakers, a plastic orchid, jigsaw puzzles, hand sanitiser. Entering the 53 bed lodgings was uplifting, a Union flag of Great Britain hung in the entrance and friendly chatter filled the corridors.

Robert continues: ‘It was Friday the 10th of July 2020, my second daughter’s birthday [he has three]. I’m quite a perfectionist. It was time to let the families and friends see it. I put it on Twitter, I put it on Facebook, went home and thought nothing of it. People obviously liked the images. I knew people would, because this was their family member or friend. People did need something positive. Over that Friday night it just went crazy.’

Robert is Head of Wellbeing at Sydmar Lodge, ensuring the health and happiness of the residents, staff and relatives through meaningful and personalised engagement; playing the piano, organising entertainers, quizzes, activities, events, outside trips and utilising residents to recreate iconic album covers! It was his Care Home Album Covers (CHAC) initiative which went viral on social media four years ago, four months into the first lockdown. That original Friday night tweet has received over 37K retweets, 1.5K comments and over 12 million views. Sydmar Lodge was trending. Radio and TV outlets reached out from across the globe – UK (including BBC, ITV, Channel 5), Europe, North and South America (ABC, NBC), Canada, Australia and the Far East.

It’s understandable why. The reimagined album covers are charming and authentic, created at a time when positivity was needed and vigorously shared. For inspiration, Robert typed into Google, ‘top iconic album covers’. He already knew the residents well and which of them would be best suited for each album cover. They had to like the particular singer or have some resemblance.

Vera was the ideal resident to recreate the fifth photo in the CHAC series, Adele’s second studio album 21. Vera was passionate about music and had similar hair to Adele. Vera’s name and age, 93, were inserted as the title. Robert recognised Lily had strength of character and a vague resemblance to Madonna, so cast her on the cover of the eighth photo in series, the 1986 album, True Blue. Roma had a similar hairdo to that of David Bowie for the fourth recreation, the 1973 album Aladdin Sane. It was then just a case of applying the iconic lightning bolt across the obliging Roma’s face. Positive comments even arrived through Twitter from Bowie’s widow Iman and son Duncan Jones. A fitting tribute.

For the first two albums in the series, 94-year-old Sheila used her walking stick in a playful reference to Elvis Presley’s 1956 eponymous album. Sheila then used her walking stick to emulate The Clash’s Paul Simonon’s bass guitar. Robert says: ‘Recreating this album felt even more relevant, since my series features works of pastiche, the practice of making art by intentionally imitating the style of someone else’s work. I just told Sheila to smash down her walking stick thinking of how she felt due to the Covid lockdown.’

Shelia’s third album reconstruction was Human by Rag’n’Bone Man, of whom she was an avid fan. ‘I think I look like him. Hahahaha. I just like Rag’n’ Bone Man. Charming, charitable, a very nice person,’ she says in one TV interview. In 2018 Robert had helped fulfil her bucket-list wish to see Rag’n’Bone Man in concert, at London’s Blackheath Festival, where she got to meet him backstage and was given a signed album. For the cover Robert replicated the artist’s tattoo on Sheila’s arms.

Not all the album covers featured residents. It was important for Robert to highlight the carers working at Sydmar Lodge and acknowledge those across the care profession. He did this by recreating the sixth photo in the series, Queen’s 1974 album, Queen II. Four female carers are shown in deep shadow, wearing pale or dark blue uniforms. The carer at the front wears blue gloves, arms crossed and a badge saying Lisa. The angle of the lighting is modified to mimic the original album to create a more intense and emotive feel.

To shoot the series, Robert opted to use a smartphone rather than his Nikon and a more cost-effective Huawei to an Apple or Samsung. Robert now uses Xiaomi and Oppo phones. The lighting was natural. He did every aspect including the stunning makeup. Each image was edited on the phone or in some cases using Microsoft Paint when adding text and fonts. The odd background removed, a conversion to black & white, never overly polished. ‘I only realised that when it was blown up to be printed the same size as an album, there was very little distortion. I didn’t shoot a raw file. I hadn’t even thought about printing it out. It was only supposed to be sent to family and friends. I’d not thought about them being printed out as pieces of art,’ he says.

He had to think about this when the Science Museum got in touch with him about acquiring the original series of 12. ‘There were so many emails coming through. My sister was fielding Twitter for me and the press. My wife saw that email and said I had to respond. I wasn’t even sure what ‘acquiring’ meant. Once I got my head around that, I had a really good discussion with the Science Museum and they made it very easy for me, explaining every process, even the pricing.’ They’re printed as an edition of 25 on Fuji C-Type paper and sized 12x12in to replicate an album cover. Prints are priced £395 each and all profits will be shared with the Alzheimer’s Society and Sydmar Lodge residents.

The series of 12 became 16 when Robert was emboldened to continue after the lead singer of Ultravox, Midge Ure, requested via Twitter that Robert construct the Vienna album which was celebrating its 40th anniversary. Robert summoned Freda, Mildred, Muriel and the reliable Sheila. ‘There was really no editing in that. The challenge was getting all four residents to stand in the right positions at the right time while I took a photo. What was complicated was assembling the chairs at the time and putting sheets over them to mimic the image. That was hard as was positioning the residents to do it. By the time you get to the last one they’ve already moved or one of them would say, “Don’t tell me to do that!” On seeing the finished album cover recreation Midge Ure delivered his verdict: ‘Utterly, utterly brilliant, Robert.’

Copycat projects were a further endorsement of the success. Residents at a care home in Aylesbury recreated their favourite Taylor Swift covers ahead of her 2024 UK Eras Tour. It’s debatable how much these ‘Senior Swifties’ knew about the music. An outside film crew documented the process. A professional photographer took the photos. A green screen was deployed. There was a heavy whiff of PR which raises ethical questions whether to coerce potentially vulnerable people to participate. Robert hides any concerns. ‘It’s not something I can patent. If anybody wants to do it, it’s fine. If it’s other care homes, fair play to them.’

Perhaps as a nod of respect (or guilt), the Aylesbury care home didn’t recreate the Taylor Swift 2014 album (named after her year of birth) that Robert had used. With his usual tenacity, Robert had tried to source a replica of the jumper Swift wore for the album cover. Not wanting to get into an extortionate bidding war on an auction website, Robert decided instead to print out an image of the jumper in A3, cutting out the neckline and asking resident Renee to hold it up in position. Renee’s initials and year of birth R.C. 1922 correlating to Taylor Swift’s use of her own initials and date of birth T.S. 1989 were applied on the album cover.

Photography and music are recognised as having health and well-being benefits, especially for those living with dementia. They can help them communicate, stay connected and trigger favourable memories. Robert acknowledges an element in his CHAC. ‘It was very difficult to explain the concept to some of the residents. I’d show them the album cover and say you’re going to be that, that’s what we’re going to make but it’s going to be you instead of Michael Jackson or David Bowie. It was only after it was finished would they laugh and say, “Now I understand.”

Their reactions were heartening and uplifting. They do place their trust in me and it’s my job not to let them down and I hope I didn’t. A lot of them with dementia would forget they even did the photo shoot. I’ll still show them it every so often and they won’t remember it at all. That it was on TV, in the media, all over the world, no recollection of it, so it’s nice they can relive it again. The families and close friends really appreciated the whole project and the opportunity for their loved relative to be involved in such an exciting initiative. They treasure the images!’

Robert has been up since 5am sourcing birthday cake recipes. His daughter wants a movie-themed birthday party but told him at the last minute that her friends had all seen the film Wonka which was planned to be shown. Robert recommended BIG (1988) and Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) instead. I stand to shake his hand goodbye. Before I do, he pulls out his phone and shows a recreation of the iconic album cover STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON by controversial American hip-hop gangsta-rap group N.W.A. The title on his, reads STRAIGHT OUTTA EDGWARE. ‘I’ve a lot more ideas for album covers,’ he says with a broad smile.

For more information visit: www.carehomealbumcovers.com/contact

Further reading on album cover photography:

• Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover voted ‘most iconic of all time’
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles
• Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones
• Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

Follow AP on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

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Astrophotographer Josh Dury captured this stunning image of the Orion Constellation above the iconic Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival site earlier this year in January. It was months in the making, with extensive research undertaken, recces and hours of planning.

Capturing this self-portrait has been an aspiration for Josh for quite some time. His passion for the arts makes this legendary location of one of the world’s most well-known music festivals, the ideal backdrop for creating his masterpiece. But to pull it off, he had several elements to consider and careful planning to ensure the stars aligned on the night.

It was during a recce of the site on New Year’s Eve that Josh realised his plans to shoot at his desired location would be far more straightforward than originally anticipated. After stopping to chat to a couple of locals, he eagerly shared his ambitions with them, and they assured him the landowners, Sir Michael and Emily Eavis, encouraged the public to roam freely along the many footpaths across their land. Josh was given the green light. ‘My hopes of being able to capture “Starstruck” were looking more promising.’

Next, Josh had to pinpoint the exact location. ‘I needed to know which direction the “skeleton” of the Pyramid Stage would be in context to the setting of Orion, which is approximately south-west-west. The image had to be timed precisely at the right place and at the right time to capture Orion from this perspective.’

Once Josh was able to visualise the angle of view, he had to tackle his next challenge – the weather and light conditions in the night sky. Unfortunately, the weather throughout January had been abysmal and he had to wait for a clear night with minimal light from the moon. ‘I needed to capture those finer details under as dark as skies as possible. This also needed to be timed with the constellation Orion beginning to set towards the south-west at approximately midnight to 1am.’

When the perfect conditions finally presented themselves, Josh set out with his Sony A7S, Sigma Art 20mm f/1.4 lens, and his Benro Tortoise 24CLV and geared head.

Due to the astronomical nature of the image, the final picture is a composite. The image depicts an area of the night sky known as The Orion Molecular Complex. Josh explains, ‘This region captures faint details that consist of hydrogen-alpha gas emissions that stretch through the Constellation of Orion; including a notable astronomical target, referred to astronomically, as “Barnard’s Loop”.

These details are just about detectable using unmodified cameras. While some astrophotographers decide to remove the infrared-cut filter from their camera sensors to resolve this detail over long exposures, it can render the warranty of your camera void.’ In this instance, Josh decided to capture what was possible with his camera setup without the need for modification. He continues, ‘This image required extensive exposures, 10 second subs over a 30-minute exposure, in relatively dark skies from the same spot and is documented as a composite for that very purpose.’

The hours of preparation paid off and after a successful shoot Josh can now proudly show off his hard work. His self-portrait was deliberately crafted under the frame of the Pyramid Stage to mimic the many names in music who have passed before, from the likes of Bowie and Dolly Parton to Sir Elton John. Josh says, ‘This image brings together the pyramid that is photography, music and astronomy. Capturing the “King of the Stars” – Orion, as he takes centre stage.’

This self-portrait really is a wonderful celebration of the arts and Josh dedicates it to two of his greatest musical influences, Kate Bush and Grace Jones. Josh says, ‘This is my attempt to reach out to them through the stars to give thanks for what their music has lent to me narratively to craft my images. In the hopes that one day, it will be their turn to take their place on centre stage.’

About Josh Dury

Josh Dury is an award-winning professional landscape astrophotographer, presenter, speaker and writer from the Mendip Hills in Somerset. His work is recognised by major publishing and media outlets, including: NASA, BBC, ITV and CNN amongst others. See more of his work at www.joshduryphoto-media.com

Further reading:

• The night sky: How to photograph stars and the Milky Way
• Guide to night landscape photography
• How to shoot star trails – in 6 easy steps
• How to photograph the moon – and super moon!

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What better way to spend a Thursday morning, than hanging out of an open-door helicopter over London? A couple of weeks ago I joined 75 years young American aerial photographer, Donn Delson for a flight over the city for what was, a truly inspirational and exhilarating experience.

Prior to photography, Donn built and sold the 4th largest entertainment merchandise business in the world, BandMerch. Donn represented worldwide merchandising (tour, e-commerce, licensing, and retail) for artists like Rihanna, Billy Joel, Alanis Morissette, Outkast, and Linkin Park. Having had multiple careers throughout his life, Donn retired in 2010 and pursued his passion for photography, starting with landscape photography and experimenting with long exposures and industrial laser beams.

It was my first ever experience in a helicopter, but for Donn, being strapped in and leaning out of a rotorcraft at approx 580m/1900ft (and sometimes even higher!) has become a regular occurrence since his first taste in New Zealand in 2015. On a casual helicopter trip with his wife, filming a glacier, the pilot offered Donn the chance to shoot with the doors off. ‘I said, “That sounds awesome!”, and so they buckled me in with a harness and they pulled the door open. And that was it for me. I was just in love.’

Finding a niche

Like most of us, up until that point Donn had never experienced taking photographs from above unless in an airplane looking through the tiny windows. ‘The gift of getting a bird’s eye view of the beauty of the world below. The freedom of looking out and down with no windows or reflections to distort the image, the sheer joy and appreciation of what I was getting to do and be able to share with others, I knew I’d found my niche.’

The return to LA and subsequent research and exploration has led Donn to several destinations across the US as well as London, Amsterdam, Kyoto, the Dead Sea, parts of Italy and many more.

‘My goal is to look for the artistic vision that the landscape reveals, the patterns, the symmetry, the colour combinations, and my vision of trompe l’oeil in the literal sense, in that it tricks the eye.’ His clear fascination with patterns and symmetry pays homage to abstract Bauhaus artists like Paul Klee, Mark Rothko and Piet Mondrian.

‘I’m obsessed with perception and how looking at things from a different perspective or angle often yields an entirely different impression. You know, appearance versus reality. What’s commonplace and known to us on the ground, takes on a completely different appearance when looking straight down from above.’

On his first helicopter trip over New York, he was determined to create his own version of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie over Times Square with its chock-a-block colours and shapes. As a result of Donn’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, which is part of the Points of Light Collection, people then started to gravitate to his images.

Aerial photography: a matter of planning and chance

Sitting next to Donn in the helicopter I watched him at work, unfazed by the wind, jolts and swings of the helicopter. On our 20-minute trip we went from Battersea Power Station, via the British Museum, the Gherkin, Tower Bridge, and the Shard to the O2, and back again via St Paul’s Cathedral, Piccadilly Circus and Regents Street. Enjoying all the main landmarks of the city, without the crowds. traffic and joys of the underground.

In a short space of time, I could see that Donn was methodical and careful about which images he took. Prior to any flight, he might have some shots in mind (like The Crown Jewel a direct birds-eye view of the British Museum roof). A simple “Yes, got it.” Came from beside me as a signal to the pilot to move on. But most of Donn’s images fall to chance and serendipity, he has many stories about times like these but one about visiting Japan is particularly special.

‘I went to Japan this past November to shoot fall colours, as they are always so magnificent. Except this year, because I guess my timing was a bit off. We’re flying over the mountains west of Tokyo and the colours are just not vibrant… so I was disappointed. I looked off to the left and saw Mount Fuji. The pilot looked at me and he said “It’s usually covered in clouds. Look today, you are so lucky. This is so unusual.” There was cloud cover, but the peak of Mount Fuji was crystal clear and gorgeous. This little floating area of clouds come over from the right and blended a bit to the left of Fuji and balanced the image perfectly… I got the most incredible picture and made the whole trip a success.’

Another example is in Xylophones, where Donn captured rows of shipping containers at a port in Los Angeles. To him, the containers look like the musical bars on a xylophone, but he often gets the question of “why have you photographed a bookshelf?”; before they look closer and notice shipping containers with a large white lorry passing through. ‘It’s those surprise elements that come along that really make the difference too. It would’ve been a beautiful picture without the white truck. But the white truck was just like a gift.’

Kit for aerial photography

In terms of kit, Donn’s current cameras of choice are the Fujifilm GFX100 and Nikon D850. He said, ‘I love both these bodies and use them extensively. To give the viewer the best possible experience, to allow them to almost literally step into the picture and be with me in the helicopter. I make all my images large scale, the smallest being about 81 cm x 122 cm.’ The 102 megapixels of the Fuji GFX100 allows Donn the option of capturing insane amounts of detail and printing larger. The Nikon however, is Donn’s go-to for twilight and low light photography. When it comes to lenses, ‘With the Fuji, I tend to carry a mix of the 110mm F2, 32-64mm F4 and sometimes the 100-200mm F5.6. With the Nikon, the Nikkor 24-70 F2.8E FL ED VR.’

He also shoots in raw for the maximum amount of information. ‘Raw requires that I do some work in post-production, in Lightroom and Photoshop, but primarily to remove haze, increase contrast, or color saturation, basically to try to make the image as close as possible to what I actually saw.’

What about drones?

Despite some of the challenges that come with aerial photography – turbulence, unexpected weather, angles, the sun and the vibration from wind and propellers – to name a few. Donn hasn’t been tempted by drone photography. ‘I have the utmost respect for some of the amazing photography that I’ve seen lately that has been produced using drones.’ But it’s the connection and the emotion between Donn in the helicopter and looking down at the subject himself that is needed for the work. ‘I also fly to heights upward of 4,000 meters (12,000ft) as necessary to accomplish a shot. Drones are, I think, more limited, particularly over populated areas, as to what heights they are permitted to fly.’

Presentation is everything

Being unrestricted is an idea that resonates throughout Donn’s work and how it is presented too. He told me, ‘I don’t frame from pieces traditionally either. I mount them under acrylic with no frame… The idea being that without the frame you don’t have the encumbrance of the border. You have the freedom to, just like when you looked out the helicopter with no door, you had the perfect ability to just feel like a bird… I try to communicate that in my photography as well.’

The whimsical titles given to each piece reflect what they may resemble from high above, asking the audience to rethink their inherent assumptions about what they are seeing.

Advice for starting out in aerial photography

Aerial photography has taken Donn all over the world, so you might think he must have a favourite place he’s photographed… ‘The world from above is pretty spectacular, and although I’ve been fortunate to have travelled extensively, there’s still so much I hope to see and be able to shoot. If I include an image in my collection, it’s only because I love it. There’ve been so many…  sensational stories of things that I’ve experienced and had the opportunity to see that I can’t really pick a favourite… I’d love to go to India. I haven’t been.’

Having been up in the helicopter with Donn, I have a real appreciation for his process and the images he makes. I’ve always been an advocate for “looking up” to challenge your perspective – but now, I say “look down” when you get the chance to as well. Abstracting the mundanities of everyday life through this distance in such an artistic matter is what makes Donn’s work so special. In our interview, Donn shared with me a quote by Annie Albers, a weaving and textile artist from the Bauhaus School in the early 1900’s. She said, ‘You know it’s great art, if it makes you breathe differently.’ And Donn’s work certainly takes my breath away.

If you’ve ever thought about creating this type of work, Donn has one piece of advice for you:

‘My advice would be, do it. After 75 years of living, my advice would be if you have a passion for something, if there’s something that intrigues you, [or] something that piques your interest, never let anybody tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t… Every time I’ve stepped outside my comfort zone, I’ve experienced growth.’

Donn Delson’s top tips for fine art aerial photography

1. Shoot a high shutter speed 1/1600-1/2000 to help eliminate the vibration
2. Shoot in burst mode. The first and last few of the burst may or may not be in focus, but the middle should be.
3. Only take images that evoke an emotional reaction of some sort in you.
4. Take images that you believe will tell a story, evoke confusion, curiosity, joy, calm, etc. as every viewer sees something different in an image.
5. With respect to helicopter photography, it can also be quite expensive, so it helps if people want to collect your work to enjoy for themselves.

Donn Delson’s next solo show is scheduled for January 2025 at Axiom Contemporary in Scottsdale, AZ.

See more of Donn’s work on his website and Instagram.

Further reading:

• What is Fine Art? Photographers explain…
• Fine art architecture photography guide
• Guide to fine art black and white photography
• Guide to fine art landscape photography

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From 1986-1992, Sebastião Salgado travelled across the globe documenting the end of the first big Industrial Revolution and the demise of manual labour. The result was the classic tome, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. The book presented six essential chapters: Agriculture, Food, Mining, Industry, Oil and Construction.

The striking black & white images are an eclectic odyssey, from Russian car factories to the beaches of Bangladesh. Collectively, the book delivered a masterclass in photographic technique – content and contrast, lighting and composition. It is testament to the best attributes of the power of photography and what can be achieved through collaboration between subject, sponsor, publisher, editor, colleagues, friends and family.

Thirty years on from its first publication in 1993 and now republished by Taschen, Workers still resonates, perhaps more so as the world’s population is increasingly sucked into a screen/computer/robot-led existence. To mark the anniversary and the book’s republication, we ask leading figures in photography about the significance of Workers, Salgado’s importance and his influence on their craft, and their favourite of his images from this important book.

Andy Greenacre – Director of Photography, The Telegraph Magazine / Telegraph Luxury

‘There are a great many photographs by Sebastião Salgado that have attained iconic status within the canon of his works, but from Workers I have chosen what might, at first glance, seem a more prosaic image. Shot in 1990 at the Brest military shipyard in France, the picture of a welder, shown below, works on several levels.

‘First, the composition and scale is much tighter than many of Salgado’s photographs, yet it retains a sense of crackle and drama with him shooting so close to the sparks being thrown off the steel. Second, we are treated to his trademark printing with absolute whites and inky blacks. But what I like
most about this picture is the nod to the surrealism in the work of photographers of the 1930s, in particular Cartier-Bresson and Alvarez Bravo.

Salgado’s low shooting position gives us that eye within an eye, a touch of humour that adds another dimension to the photograph. From record of
industry to surrealist fun, this is a great example of Salgado’s ability to imbue his works with multiple levels of depth and interpretation.’

Carol Allen-Storey – Award-winning photojournalist chronicling complex humanitarian and social issues

‘Sebastião Salgado’s style of photography, for me, fosters poetic beauty embracing brutally raw subjects – from poverty through to the oppression of cultures and the impact of industrialisation on the natural landscape. His photographs go beyond language and culture, reaching deep into our souls and challenging us to reflect on the world we live in. They provoke debate and a call to action.

‘Salgado said: “I’m not an artist. An artist makes an object. Me, it’s not an object, I work in history, I’m a storyteller,” and “Photography is a language that is all the more powerful because it can be read anywhere in the world without the need for translation.” His exquisitely crafted visuals and personal philosophy have had a profound influence on my brand of photography.’

Nigel Atherton – Editor, Amateur Photographer

‘There are key moments in all our lives that shape who we are and what we believe in, and one of mine was the day in 1993 that I went to the Royal Festival Hall in London to see Sebastião Salgado’s Workers exhibition. Oil workers, gold miners, ship-breakers, fishermen, farmers, tea pickers and others were all sympathetically but beautifully photographed like the heroes of an epic visual poem.

‘It was my “red pill” moment, showing me for the first time how the comforts that we enjoy are so often built upon the exploitation of some of the world’s poorest people. Salgado’s next project, Migrations, which focused on migrants, refugees and displaced people around the world, many fleeing conflict or natural disasters, was equally powerful and is just as relevant today. His subsequent projects, Genesis and Amazonia, focused on humanity’s relationship with nature and were no less epic in scale and visual impact.

‘Choosing just one Salgado image is tough, but I feel I have to go with one of the images that first made my jaw drop all those years ago, from his now-iconic 1986 project on the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil. The astonishing sight of 50,000 men digging for gold in the mud of the Amazon, like a scene from Dante’s Inferno, or the building of the pyramids, is one that has stayed with me. This mine is now closed, but it’s a blight on humanity that millions still live similarly wretched lives.’

Russ O’Connell – Picture Editor, The Sunday Times Magazine

‘Salgado is one of those rare and prolific photojournalists who documents world events and natural world scenes with an honest yet artistic eye. His monochromatic images often play with scale and perspective in a way that is both intriguing and awe-inspiring. From his iconic images of workers in the burning oil fields of Kuwait, to the majestic tail of a southern right whale in his Genesis works, he never ceases to amaze me with the scope and detail of the work he produces.

‘My favourite image of his (Serra Pelada gold mine, Brazil, 1986) is biblical in scale, akin to a scene from an Indiana Jones feature film. It shows a worker in a Brazilian gold mine, standing like Jesus on the cross, while hundreds of other workers scurry up and down primitive ladders like ants carrying earth on their backs. It’s hard to believe it is a real scene and not an orchestrated film set, but that’s the beauty in Salgado’s work; it always leaves you stunned by its undeniable reality.’

Edmond Terakopian – Photojournalist and commercial photographer, winner of the British Press Awards Photographer of the Year award

‘I think most of us can remember the photographs that grabbed us and completely shook us to the core, staying with us for life. Salgado’s ‘Crucifixion’ photograph from the open gold mine at Serra Pelada in Brazil from 1986, is just such an image. It engaged me both emotionally and intellectually.

‘The scale of it is immense. It’s a photograph that captures a grand vista showing almost ant-like colonies of men in the background, creating a dramatic mosaic of suffering for a meagre wage, yet at the same time juxtaposes an amazing portrait of absolute exhaustion, elegantly, with immense gentleness and empathy. A man broken through a day of hell, all to feed the super-wealthy with their obsession for wanting more and more gold.

‘On a personal level, at the age of 17, a year after starting photography, this image also changed the direction of my life. It opened my eyes to what a camera could produce, when in the hands of a thoughtful, intelligent, empathetic photographer, with immense aesthetic talent. It set me on the path to wanting to be a photojournalist. I could even say that I owe my career to this photograph.’

David Collyer FRPS – RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2021

‘Every artistic genre has its standout practitioners; those who transcend the ordinary or even the extraordinary to become indisputable masters. Sebastião Salgado is one of photography’s masters. Not only are his campaigning photojournalism and social documentary work vital in showing the plight of some of the world’s most vulnerable and exploited people, but he does so with a consistent technical excellence. Importantly, his work is also visually stunning. Each photograph, a sumptuous feast for the eyes, is an unflinching gaze into the realities of the subject, yet is never done with anything other than respect and empathy for those he portrays.

‘Choosing a favourite Salgado image is almost impossible, but I’ve chosen the photo of the ship Prodromos being broken up in Bangladesh in 1989. The workers are imperative to the shot but dwarfed almost into non-existence by the looming hulk of the ship; they are vital yet somehow insignificant. The juxtaposition of the might of the vessel and the diminutive, exploited scrap workers is a perfect metaphor for the whole of Salgado’s work.

It really is a powerful testament to the battle between man and the elements, and the planet and the excesses of man. This shot has everything, yet unlike so much of his work, it’s strangely minimal in its composition. The strength of the shot, however, is that because of that sparse presentation, its impact is masterfully maximal. Genius!’

Tom Oldham – Photographer, Founder of Creative Corners, AP’s Hero of Photography 2023 and Sony Imaging Ambassador

‘Describing Salgado’s impact on photography is nigh-on impossible as he transcends the form. Us mere pixel- peepers aren’t asking what lens or format or megapixels or developer he’s using, are we? In no way is this work about the technical (though of course he is a master) – it’s so much more about how can anyone capture such magnitude, such incredible enormity whilst retaining that essential relatability necessary for an image to be about humans.

‘For me, what Salgado is to photography, The Beatles are to music and Ali is to boxing – you easily forget the medium and focus just on the message. The depth of understanding and pure power in those compositions has created change in us all, and for that the world owes Salgado a colossal debt.’

Ian Berry – Leading British photojournalist and Magnum Photos member since 1962

‘The first thing about Sebastião is that he’s a great photographer. Secondly, he has a background as an economist working for the World Bank which gave him a wide knowledge of global affairs and conditions. Lastly he’s a terrific guy, which is a great combination for a photojournalist/documentary photographer.

‘It was on his travels to Africa for the World Bank that he first started seriously taking photographs of the people he met. Then in 1973, he abandoned his career as an economist to concentrate on photography, working initially on news assignments before veering towards the work for which he is well-known. In 1979 he joined Magnum Photos, resigning in 1994 to start his own agency, Amazonas Images, in Paris with his wife Lélia.

‘I have sad memories of Magnum board meetings when there were discussions between two distinct sides on the board about where Magnum was going. Sebastião said that if Magnum didn’t maintain its editorial outlook he would quit. Things got heated. Sebastião rose, apparently about to depart, when Henri Cartier-Bresson got up and wedged a chair under the doorknob – a symbolic gesture to prevent him leaving. Then things became more peaceable but flared up again at a later board meeting when he rose to explain why he would leave Magnum and was basically ignored. He quit and I drove him to Heathrow to fly back home.

‘Although he decided to leave Magnum he has gone on to greater things, producing wonderful books with his capacity to spend years on a project. He is what Magnum should be about and is a great example for any budding photojournalist / documentary photographer.

‘Another side to mention is that he is also a passionate believer in preserving the environment. In 1998 his wife Lélia and he created Instituto Terra, an environmental organisation that aims to promote the restoration of the Rio Doce valley. Instituto Terra, besides advocating reforestation, promotes environmental education, scientific research, and sustainable development. For his part he has planted thousands of trees on his organic farm in Brazil.’

Tiffany Tangen – Head of Content, Wex Photo Video

‘Rembrandt became synonymous with the Golden Age because he was able to paint preternatural light, and for the same reason Sebastião Salgado is synonymous with photography. Spending a lifetime documenting the world in uncontrollable conditions, Salgado is able to see the light, regardless of what’s unfolding in front of him; to capture truth and trauma so beautifully is a rarity, and one that allows the audience to connect with a situation more wholly.   

‘My favourite image from the Workers collection is ‘Coal Mining, Dhanbad, Bihar, India, 1989’ (above). Salgado encapsulates a sense of individuality against a backdrop of sameness, like ants marching towards summer. His ability to connect you with the subject allows you to see both the solitary man, and the army marching behind. The two perspectives offer an all-encompassing visual story. The ability to document so beautifully, and in such an image-saturated world, gives scope for the general public to care more, which is something that is entirely welcomed.’

Book Review – Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age

Workers is widely recognised as an exploration of the activities that have defined labour from the Stone Age through the Industrial Age to the present. Faithful to the spirit and intent of the original publication, it pays tribute to the time-honoured tradition of manual labour.

‘This book is an homage to workers, a farewell to a world of manual labour that is slowly disappearing and a tribute to those men and women who still work as they have for centuries,’ writes Salgado. His lens elevates the workers to hero or saint. The constant companions of manual labour – poverty, disease, exploitation, injury – are largely ignored. It unapologetically avoids straying from the frontline of the working environment into people’s private lives.

That’s the Salgado way of taking pictures, to eulogise his subjects and present the best comprehension of human beings and the human condition. To show how the spirit of man prevails in the harshest of conditions. To deliver a message of endurance and hope. Every social documentary photographer and photojournalist has their own eye and a decision to make about what to record and take responsibility for what to leave out, in order to construct a narrative that can effect positive change. Salgado’s method provides a valid historical truth within a framework about workers, how the world works and what unites race and nationalities.

‘Salgado unveils the pain, the beauty, and the brutality of the world of work on which everything rests,’ wrote playwright Arthur Miller on the book’s original publication – a description that would be equally valid if written today.

Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age by Sebastião Salgado is published by Taschen, RRP £80. www.taschen.com

More reading:

• Sebastião Salgado honoured in Sony Awards
• Sebastião Salgado’s new book: Amazônia

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Joel Meyerowitz is strongly associated with locations including Cape Cod in Massachusetts, rural Tuscany and the busy streets of New York, where he has created some of the most memorable work of his 60-year career. So it seems strange to be interviewing him on a freezing cold January day in a residential area of north London, where he now lives and works. ‘Well, here I am,’ says Joel at the door of his studio, as if also slightly surprised to find himself there.

Although a few months from his 86th birthday, Joel is remarkably youthful for his age; he’s in very good shape both physically and mentally, and speaks as eloquently as ever. His compact, bright, white-walled studio, which he shares with his partner and fellow artist Maggie Barrett, is filled with neatly arranged books and prints, as well as assorted objects that have featured in his still-life work. 

Joel lived in New York for the majority of his adult life, then Siena, Italy for a decade before moving to London last year. Siena proved a fruitful ground for his photography and led to books of landscape and still-life subjects. He moved to London partly because Maggie was involved in a serious accident over a year ago and the city offers high-quality medical care, but also so he can be close to the social and cultural life.

‘I really enjoy myself here,’ he says. ‘I’ve been productive since we arrived and have printed most of the work for two exhibitions. And there’s a sense of community and a quality of life in London that feels good to me, compared to New York which feels more pressurised now. 

‘I like photographing here, although I don’t have a project that’s ongoing right now because other things are, in a way, of deeper interest to me personally. But I like being out on the street here. Street life is good when you’re in the centre of a city.’

Shooting in black & white – and colour

Joel started out his lifetime’s creative journey in photography in 1962. He was famously inspired to start using a camera by watching Robert Frank at work on an advertising shoot. He quickly established himself as one of the leading street photographers of his generation and he often worked directly alongside friends and contemporaries including Tony Ray-Jones and Garry Winogrand. 

At the time, black & white was considered the only type of photography for serious artistic photographers, while colour was used for commercial work, glossy magazines or amateur snapshots. There was a great antipathy in the art world towards using colour; as the great American photojournalist Walker Evans said, ‘Colour tends to corrupt photography…colour photography is vulgar.’ Although Joel worked in black & white, he also used colour extensively from the beginning and is now seen as one of the leading exponents for artistic photography in the period.

This street work forms the main part of Joel’s exhibition at Tate Modern, A Question of Color. This section consists of pairs of images of the same scene, shot on colour and black & white 35mm film, and invites us to compare the images. Sometimes the two images are very similar, and other times they’re quite different. They have come about because when Joel was working on the streets, he would take two cameras – mainly Leicas – one loaded with black & white negative film and the other loaded with Kodachrome colour transparency film.

He says he shot two versions of a situation to prove his point – long since accepted now, but radical at the time – that colour is the best way of capturing and interpreting the abundant variety of the world around us. ‘Working in colour requires a larger sensibility,’ he says. ‘It meant I could play photography on a richer scale [giving] a more intimate, personal understanding of what time and life and light mean, rather than in the reductive, narrow scheme of black & white.

‘And that’s what I think those pictures at the Tate Modern offer the viewer. You look at them side by side and you can see the bones of the picture in black & white. But when you see the same thing next to it in colour, and you see the nuances and the way light bounces around and comes up off a wall and flashes back, you can start to look into it dimensionally and emotionally, I think in ways that are expansive, they’re symphonic, rather than like playing a solo instrument.’

It’s interesting to view the pairs of pictures side-by-side in the exhibition; as well as comparing the colour and black & white rendition of a scene, one can also look at how he made pictures of the same situation from different angles and how it developed over a short time period. 

‘What I appreciate most is the challenge it poses to the viewer and the engagement [it provokes]. The Tate says people spend more time in that room than just about any other room in that wing of the gallery.’

Colour work

Although photo-historians previously credited William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel with striking out a new direction in photography by their use of colour in the 1970s, the exhibition shows that Joel was using colour much earlier. In fact, it was he who initially spurred Eggleston on to take up colour photography.  

‘In 1968, Eggleston came up to New York to meet the New York photographers and to show his work,’ Joel remembers. ‘He came to my house one night and showed me 50 8x10in black & white prints and I showed him 300 colour slides in a carousel projector. I enlarged them on the wall so the pictures were two feet across. 

‘He left at 3.30 in the morning, saying, “I’m shooting colour from now on, you’ve converted me.” But at that time, you couldn’t easily make colour prints that were high-quality, because you had to go from the slide to an inter-negative to a print. And the inter-negative lost depth in the shadows, and tone in the highlights were kind of muddy.’

At the time, the only way to make a really high-quality colour print was by using the dye transfer process, which was complicated and expensive. Joel continues, ‘In the late ’60s, dye transfers cost $300 to make one print and when I was working in the ’60s I was earning $50 a week. So $300 was like a month’s rent. It was impossible. But Eggleston was a rich kid, so could afford it and was able to make these prints.’ Eggleston’s first major exhibition of dye transfer prints, held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1976, is often seen as a turning point in the acceptance of colour photography as an artistic medium.  

Joel’s use of Kodachrome also had the effect of changing the kind of images he wanted to shoot. ‘I wanted to get everything sharp, because Kodachrome was sharp, so I saw that to make the depth I needed, I would have to double my normal shooting distance. I saw I’d have to give up shooting “the incident” so that I could get everything in the frame and make what I called a “field photograph”. 

‘That changed my perception of what was interesting on the street. I needed to see multiple actions and connections going on at once, so it was really much more engaged and inter-related, rather than an object or an incident being the single thing. So I found myself making a more difficult kind of picture.’ 

One example of this kind of image is West 46th Street, Manhattan, a New York street scene that captures a range of people and buildings in one frame. There’s no one single subject; the subject is everything in the picture. 

However, this change in approach meant Joel also needed to change the format in which he was shooting. He says, ‘The print quality [of the 35mm pictures] wasn’t good enough, but I knew if I worked with an 8x10in negative I would have everything and I could print it, because the labs could print bigger negatives at large scale.’ So in 1976, Joel bought a 1938 Deardorff 8x10in view camera, which was made of mahogany and brass with leather bellows. 

He spent the summer of that year in Cape Cod on the Massachusetts coast, making detailed, meditative colour images that captured the location’s atmosphere and quality of light. The result was Cape Light, a popular and influential book that went on to sell over 150,000 copies and launch a completely new phase in Joel’s career. This led on to many other projects in the following years, selections from which are included in the Tate Modern exhibition. 

They include his Empire State series (1978), a collection of New York urban landscapes, taken in different locations but which all include the iconic Empire State Building; and Aftermath, a monumental series of detailed images created in the sheer devastation of Ground Zero in the weeks and months following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Today and tomorrow

As well as the Tate Modern exhibition, Joel also currently has another exhibition in London, at the Huxley-Parlour gallery. Titled ‘Dialogues’, it also presents his work in pairs, but this time there’s a different relationship between the images. ‘Sometimes you see two pictures near each other and they have a kind of conversation,’ says Joel. There’s something that makes you want to put them together in a book or hang them together on
the wall.

‘So I thought, why don’t we do a set of pairs of pictures that are in dialogue with each other? Some pictures just relate to other pictures – it might be scale change, it might be colour relationships, it might be a space that has similarities in it. What I really would like to do is to engage the viewer in the act of looking.’

Joel has also published two books during the past year: A Question of Color (Thames & Hudson, 2023), which shows a wider range of his colour/black & white street photographs of the 1960s and ’70s than the Tate Modern display, and The Pleasure of Seeing (Damiani, 2023) in which he discusses his life in photography. ‘I’d like to write an autobiography, but when am I going to find the time to do that?’ he asks. ‘So that was a good way of doing it.’

Joel is currently less interested in developing new projects than revisiting old ones that didn’t receive exposure at the time they were made. ‘I’m more interested in revisiting the unseen works and doing the books that were not published back in the ’70s because there was no market at the time,’ he says. ‘I have more than 20 years of work, six or seven different big bodies of work, and I owe it to myself to bring them to the public now. I want to engage with myself in a way that I think is justified.’

He is at an age when most people have long since slowed down or have stopped working. What keeps him inspired and gives him his zest for life?

‘I see a lot of people younger than me who are schlumping around and life is over,’ he says. ‘I’m an optimist. I have been my entire life. I think humanity is capable of extraordinary optimism and poetry and grace – I see that, and I see the humour in it. And I think it’s the humour and absurdity, mixed with the grace and the beauty, that keeps me engaged.’

A Question of Color is on show at the Tate Modern, South Bank, London SE1 9TG until 3 November. The book of the same title is published by Thames & Hudson, price £20. A separate exhibition, Joel Meyerowitz: Dialogues, is on show at Huxley-Parlour, 3-5 Swallow Street, London W1B 4DE until 2 March.

Feeling inspired to take to the streets and start capturing your environment? If you are still looking for the best camera for street photography or the best lens for street photography we have you covered too, and once you had a look at the different kit options, you’ll find some great tips in our articles on street photography.

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• Black and white Street photography: tips and tricks from the experts
• Best photography exhibitions to see
• Analogue street photography tips

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