FILM PHOTOGRAPHY

My focus is on capturing ‘Presence’ on medium format black and white film. Both the direct presence of people and the traces they leave behind. I capture people in present in their authentic, engaged moments, performing, speaking or interacting with the environment around them. I like to capture how people exist in any given space - their own home, in the street or on a stage. I wish to capture these moments of people thriving in their own skin and surroundings. The positive aspect of human element is what I like to capture and wonder about what is going through their minds in these moments?

As well as people, capturing photos of objects that when looking closer, reveal the human presence that was there, such as a broken window. Someone was there, broke the window and left it, but there are lots of questions raised about this - how long ago was it broken? Why did they break it? Why hasn’t anyone fixed it yet? These questions hint at the human presence that was there connected in that moment but is now absent, creating a sense of narrative, history and documentary, the seen and unseen that I find powerful in my work.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

My journey into photography began when a friend gifted me a 35mm point-and-shoot film camera on my 25th birthday. Frustrated by the lack of control over exposure settings, I soon invested in a vintage manual 35mm camera and lens, teaching myself through trial and error much like how I learned 3D animation and motion graphics from my teen years. From there, I experimented with medium format using a cheap USSR TLR camera before finally settling on my vintage Rolleiflex, my camera of choice today.

Though I work across multiple mediums—film, animation, and dance—photography is the only one that forces me to pause, observe, and capture a single moment exactly as it is. I am drawn to many subjects: people dancing, the interplay of light and shadow, abandoned objects that hint at human presence. There is still much I have yet to explore, such as natural subjects like landscapes, animals and flowers, but I do not impose limits on myself. While I can shoot in color, I prefer black and white for its timeless quality.

I do not shoot digital. Not out of disdain, but because I prefer the limitations of film. Those limitations ground me, keeping me focused and intentional. Shooting black and white medium format means I think less about color and more about light and form. With my Rolleiflex, I have only 12 frames per roll. Once those frames are used, that roll is done. Once I run out of film, I stop shooting. There is no endless snapping, no immediate review, no repetition in search of perfection.

Developing my film is a slow, deliberate process. Sometimes I wait weeks, months, or longer before stepping into the darkroom. When I finally see my images emerge, it feels like opening a time capsule. The physicality of film fascinates me—the thought of an image being chemically etched into a negative feels like magic. No digital file, no electricity—just a tangible photograph that exists in the real world.

Every image I capture is intentional. I shoot because I care—about the person in the frame, the moment unfolding, the story being told.

Below is a selection of my film photography work.