Greater Manchester Tenants’ Union and Green Party Mayoral candidate Geraldine Coggins call for a rent freeze in Manchester
A homage to the convivial chaos of English markets
I bought a new hand-held set of lights and am officially obsessed! I spent a few hours on Bank Holiday Monday in Blackpool, documenting the people and colours that caught my eye. I am particularly in love with the intensity of the colours I captured in the midday heat and the ability of these Godox lights to match the intensity of the sun. I have been studying work by photographers such as Sophie Green, Jack Davison and Michelle Groskopf who I find really inspiring. The first two don’t use too much flash (if any) but Michelle Groskopf’s high impact and extremely up close street imagery is really attention grabbing. I’m still on the fence as to whether I enjoy this kind of style for portraiture because I also really love ‘slower’ more subtle portraits. I’ve set myself a goal of shooting every day over the summer (while I have time off my educational job) and to really integrate this style into my news and press work.
Fun times at the world’s biggest all-you-can-eat curry house housed in a Pyramid - aka the Royal Nawaab in Stockport, featuring Abdullah peeling the largest mound of onions I’ve ever seen.
Two images from a very small folk festival I went to recently. I’m still in love with Morris women dancers and the kit they wear. I’m also trying to embrace the light leaks and integrate them into my analogue projects instead of disregarding them for technical incompetency.
I fell in love with Adam’s paintings when I recently visited Paradise Works open studios in Manchester. His work seems to inhabit an in-between world of deep nature and urban states - the paint layered in such a way as to evoke not only the quiet but mighty life of lichens (which he is investigating and exploring) but also the graffitied walls of an overrun city, covered in layer upon layer of torn posters or the coarse surface of cheap concrete.
I asked Adam if he would sit for a portrait and he kindly obliged. I loved capturing the textures of paint and material, and the confusion of muted and vibrant greens, as well as Adam of course in his very natural habitat.
It was a real treat to share the stage with Stuart ‘Linden’ Rhodes at The Whitworth gallery in Manchester. We spoke about documenting Manchester’s queer nightlife over the years and I shared images from this project to a live audience for the first time. The Whitworth is one of my favourite galleries so it was pretty nerve-wracking - a huge thanks to all the familiar faces in the audience who came and put me at ease.
I covered Manchester’s recent by-election for The Times and other national papers. This story has been brilliant to shoot, not only because it unfolded right on my doorstep - but because it has been truly impressive to watch as Green Party leader Zack Polanski and Hannah Spencer cut through prevailing rhetorics to get their message out there.
Let’s see now if they can deliver!
I shot portraits and architecture for The Manchester Miracle , a story by Juliette Demas for Libération. Juliette looks at how city leaders have turned Manchester’s cultural capital into economic growth, and how that affects people across society. This is a topic I’ve been mulling over for a while and I’m glad the commission gave me the push to start working on it properly.
It was surprisingly emotional to see the selection of images chosen by curators for a new exhibition in Wigan. These portraits were commissioned by Wigan council in 2023 and are a response to Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier. I spent time with young people and new communities in the town, bringing together threads of heritage and belonging. Hopefully the full set of images from the project will go on display in Wigan soon. Wigan’s Voice is on until July 25th at Wigan Museum.
I will be showing eight prints from my series on contemporary English folk dance as part of Change Horses Midstream, a group exhibition which explores the idea of change - with nature, with others and from within. Curated by Will Jennings, and supported by MPB.
The prints will be available to buy, and I’ll be donating a portion of the sales to Doctors Without Borders and Love Music Hate Racism. To enquire about print sales, please contact me.
Private View Wednesday October 23rd 6-9pm
Exhibition dates: 24 Oct - 23 Nov 2024, Weds - Sat 12 - 6pm
Hypha HQ, Unit 3, Euston Tower
286 Euston Road, London NW1 3DP
Nearest tube - Warren Street
What a lovely man Jeroen Temmerman is! With a totally unpronounceable name…
for The Times. Read the story here
outside Downing Street, as the British government passes laws which would allow some employers to sack employees if they refuse to work during strike action.
