It was while studying photography at the London College of Communication that I began to use myself as a model in my images.
Really, in the beginning, this was more by necessity than by design.
I had an assignment due, in which we had to recreate an iconic image, putting our own spin onto it. I had spent days in the library, pouring over all of the images I adored and I just couldn’t pick one.
It felt like being asked to pick a favourite book, or a favourite song, or a favourite colour.
Impossible.
A treat and a torture all at once.
My indecision meant I was running out of time and I couldn’t find one of my classmates available to model for me. So I just decided to do it myself.
I ended up producing this pastiche of Robert Freeman’s cover for the With the Beatles album.
I spent an entire afternoon in the studio, sweating and cursing and trying to recreate, with the studio lights, a portrait that was taken in the corridor of a hotel in natural light.
Freed from the expectations of anyone other than myself, I took the time to figure things out. I breathed slower. I worried less. I took my time. I spent less time shooting and more time thinking. And I loved it.
But it wasn’t just a learning experience. It was much more profound than that. As the course went on, and I craved this experience again and again and again, I came to realise that I am essentially a creative introvert.
When I am creating, I don’t want other people around. I just want to be alone. And I get creative energy from that alone time.
Which is not at all to say that the purpose of my images is self indulgent or that I create only for myself. Actually it is the exact opposite.
All of my images are an attempt to share something of myself with you.
Visual communication is primal (I guess perhaps all communication is). It shares something that needs to be shared. It attempts to make connections where there were none before. It tries desperately to be understood. Do you feel this too? Do you hurt like this? Are you disappointed like this? Do you rejoice like this?
The process of creating is, for me, an attempt to hold up a broken piece of china to the light. You can see the cracks and the chips, but you can also see the veins, the very substance of life itself…if you’re very lucky.
So I don’t photograph myself because I find myself beautiful. And I don’t always photograph myself exactly as I am. I manipulate myself just as readily as I manipulate everything else. Because it’s not about my physical appearance. It’s about something much more vulnerable than that. It’s about my need to be understood, to be heard. And it’s about my need to believe in the interconnectedness of all things.
When I go out onto the Moors to photograph, I always try to convey how the places I photograph make me feel. Whether I feel afraid, or lost, or small, or filled with the grace of the divine, I try to share that with you. So that you will know me. And I believe that you will understand, because you feel those things too, and you want to share yourself just as much.
When I can communicate like that, through the intermediary of another person, I will be very happy indeed. But for now, it suits me to keep on working alone to develop my creative muscles.