Why do I take photographs? Put simply, it shows me the world through different eyes, helps me remember life and to be brutally honest, it also gives me access to places I would never see otherwise.
When I was almost 20 years old I realized I had little in the way of solid memories of my life up until then. The people I’d met, the places I’d been, only hazy recollections which became distorted over time until I could not distinguish reality from what was in my imagination. So, I decided to start recording my life and I bought a camera and in many ways I feel my life really started from then.
On a journey with my camera in hand I become more alert to everything. I shoot freely and mostly unobserved. I see each image as I shoot and from the moment I look at my negatives or my data I see more than just a photo, I see a moment of life, I see a memory. When I look back at my images over time, I remember the people in my photographs, where I was, the sequence of events before and after the shot, how the air felt on my skin, the noises that surrounded me, the emotions I felt and each thought in my head.
I’m most interested in photographing life, Life for me means people in their natural environment. Cities and countries are more than just and amalgamation of buildings and landscapes. The rich diversity of people coursing through the veins of each place make it what it is. To see a place for what it is, you must see it’s people; the things they do, the words they write, the things they build and even the things they destroy.
My journey with a camera started off as a personal trip, but gradually it became a tool to tell other people about lives they hadn’t seen for themselves. My personal trips have taken me through jungles, over mountains and into unseen worlds such as the hidden world of traditional Japanese tattooing, the elusive world of sado-masochism in the underbelly of Tokyo and even the unseen side of life in Iraq that most western media sources do not have access to or choose to shun in favour of the ongoing “war on terror.”
Wherever I end up, my cameras are always with me and I’m going to keep on sharing what I see. Hopefully I’ll get to meet more like minded people whose lives I can visit through their words and pictures also.
Will