‘Gavin’ 1988

I found this black card-backed layout I made of my first ever skateboard photo’s in a folder deep in my parents garage. It was surrounded by hundreds of pencil drawings of the monster from the ‘Dio’ album covers and still-lives of rams horns and nuts and bolts.
It scares me to think of how much time has passed since I made this and also how much the process of making these initial images nearly 25 years ago directed and paved the way for the rest of my life.
I gave a lecture at a photography symposium in Accrington College yesterday; I tried to show the pupils how a dogged belief in following something you love can work out…
I guess these pictures signify the point where I first sunk my teeth in. After that you just have to hold on, take the knocks and enjoy the trip!
Everything always works out…

Some recent commercial work for MCR Magazine…

Bridgewater Hall

The City

Manchester Business School

Marina, Athens

I’d already been in Athens for 5 days, shooting a story for a skateboard company, the insignificance of why I was there was already weighing heavily on me as I experienced another city from skate spot to skate spot…

In the morning on the 2nd Wednesday of my trip 77 year old Dimitris Christoulas took his own life at Syntagma Square. I’d been there hours before on the previous evening, buying maps to the city and melding with the rest of the ‘tourists’ and city workers.

In the note he left behind Mr Christoulas wrote:

“The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945”

That evening I spent by myself in an apartment near the coast, whilst Syntagma Square filled with mourners, protesters and riot police. With a confused and heavy heart I began to review the pictures i’d made…

I felt I wanted to leave something for Mr Christoulas.

New project link: ‘For Mr Christoulas‘