Whilst studying for my degree I began to realise that I had stepped into a world I’d never been before. I was surrounded by the middle – high classes and suddenly realised that this was not the norm for an east end working class lad like myself. This caused me to reflect on my own life and the people around me. I started to document it. The work started to gain a lot of attention and this fascinated me. What was the norm to me was other worldly to my university peers at the time.
I realised I had a doorway into a world that the general art establishment liked looking at, the snooping world of the working class! I decided to take advantage of this and created family photos in my own unique style. I wanted to capture instant stories that were completely intrinsic of the moment. I wanted to capture the little things that most people look past and I wanted to show this off to the posh art world.
This project went on to win The Owen Rowley Prize at the Sir John Cass School of Art in 2000 and is featured in The BBC’s ‘Smile! The Nations Family Album’, part of BBC4’s Photography season 2017.
The pictures were also taken on 35mm film and shown here are copies of some of the prints which unfortunately do not show the true quality of the prints. If you would to sponsor a full reproduction of this project in book or exhibition format, please contact me.
