So firstly, thank you for reading this far. If you’re on this page, you must be very committed. So this is my first blog post, and I thought it might be a nice moment to reflect on some of the ‘take a breath’ moments over the past year. Obviously it al started with bagging a book deal with the very trusting people at Unicorn Publishing. those guys took such a risk on me and will forever be grateful. Photography has been a passion since the first second I picked up my little Kodak Disk camera in the 80s.. My grandad always managed to cut everyone’s heads off which I just couldn’t understand, so I took over the reigns to bring some snappy angles to the affair, spice things up a bit.

Fast forward to 1998 and my A-levels. Obviously I chose photography and two years later I left with a U. Fail. My dad’s Nikon had been leaking light for the second year and repairs proved useless, so when I developed my course work there was nothing there but a blank reel. One photo managed to make it through, a grainy interior shot of a BT building about to be demolished to make way for the KFC drive-through.

The next 20 years are purely hobbyist with a huge side portion of ‘what if-ness’ attached. Looking back I’m a clear ‘series-phile’. In 2007 I photographed every single meal on a trip to Philadelphia and New York. Originally a client of mine who at the time owned a magazine said she would feature every image on one page, but she never came through. The food thing became a bit of a cliche, never the less, its the first of many comings of age. The next-big one is my 9 year 12:34 project. This diaristic has seen me take a single photo at 12:34pm every single day (with a 6 month hiatus) since 2011. I intended it to be a lifelike diary. Showing it’s boring parts. its exciting parts and everything in-between. I wanted it to be honest, not a highlight real but an actual everyday document of exactly how life is. At the 8 year mark I needed a break I didn’t feel the images were sincere any more and I was taking them to please Instagram followers rather than stay true to the original concept. So I took a break, waited to re light the fire, and now they are strictly for me. And you, if you ask nicely. Plus I got burgled twice, so that forces you to rethink how much personal information you post, especially if you show the entire world where you are at any given time. Risky…

Then we have Handdryers.

Move forward to 2019. There’s a guy on Instagram with a page called ‘Hand Dryers’. And he’s a designer. So if he wants to put out a book, or any kind of publication, he’s going to own this subject. Which is not happening. As far as Im concerned this subject belongs to me. There’s a few pretenders on Facebook, but they’re occupied with the comic value of the written review, and not the aesthetic. I’m all about the aesthetic baby. So, those guys aside, I need to start thinking more seriously about making a book out of this thing. So myself and Tom Burns started in earnest to arrange the 2500 images I had built up in the folder, into groups and sort into some sort of a narrative. Meanwhile, a client of mine informed me of the London Book Fair. This fair is one of the biggest in the world and all the big boys attend. She very wisely informed me to create a 10/12 page teaser of the book, which is much less intimidating and far easier to achieve. So we did. We made a 12 page BLAD (Id never heard of that either) and when March finally arrived, I went to the London Book Fair with 20 samples, my best shoes on and an extremely nervous disposition. Im walking into a room and world I know nothing about, with the biggest art publishers in the world, and Im going to convince them to give me a book deal. That’s what gonna happen.

Eventually after some very encouraging murmurs from the publishers I spoke to the guys at Unicorn. Unicorn weren’t on my list. I’d never heard of them, but they had a book called ‘Urban Cars’ which looked right in my wheel house. Its a book about cars in Brooklyn and is a typology like mine. Its a similar size and similar composition. So I picked up and was promptly asked if I’d like some help. So here we go. I take out my little booklet, inform them I own all the copy-write, all the design and its more or less ready to roll. They suggest James Dyson to write the forward. I thought my head was going to explode. 7 hours later they email to tell me they’d like to offer me a deal. what a fucking day.