You might be surprised to learn that it is very tricky to carry on a conversation whilst also making a portrait.
The trouble with any conversation during a portrait session is that, beyond the niceties of ‘Hello’ and ‘Nice weather we are having’, if you really get stuck into a topic ...
These photographs are a short diary of living in London for almost 20 years. As a street photographer I have always tried to treat everywhere as a democratic subject. London with its vast sprawl has a natural energy fed from this hive of villages belying the notion that it is just one city. It is many things. Old, overcrowded, European, multicultural, disrespectful, embracing. It’s alive and it doesn’t care about you but I have enjoyed walking its streets open to its life. I think any city on this scale is easy to hate but if you look and see you can find whatever you want. It’s an energy. You can never capture it. For every photograph I take I am acutely aware of the many moments around me, passing me by, the many lives and stories that churn and churn. Perhaps the joy of recording and choosing an image is the opportunity to look at it and imagine what might be going on, for that moment.
I was born in in Dublin but I feel like a Londoner these days, its my home. I moved there in 1997 and have been taking photographs here wherever I ...