MFA Photography Portfolio
Where We Meet
This stop-motion work reflects on the attempt to hold onto moments as they disappear. Through this, I can suspend a moment while simultaneously showing it slipping away. The drawn figure around my daughter is always slightly ahead within this sequence, representing movement into the drawn shape; this shape also acts like a protective bubble.
BA Photography portfolio
The next generations turn
The Next Generation’s Turn is a moving-image installation exploring legacy, memory, and the quiet strength of generational change. Using stop-motion portraiture, spoken word, photography, and sculptural projection, it traces a lineage across three generations: my father-in-law, my wife, and our daughter, each embodying the past, present, and future. Projected onto thread-woven frames, the imagery echoes domestic craft and the fragile bonds that hold families together. A poem I wrote, voiced by YouTuber Hellfreezer, weaves through the piece as a rhythmic meditation on inheritance, release, and love. This is not about control, but about rhythm. Not about holding on, but knowing when to let go. It reimagines inheritance as a heartbeat passed forward and asks: What do we carry? What do we leave behind? And can we step aside with grace? This is her moment. Her revolution. Her turn.
Recipient of the Association of Photographers Photography Practice Award 2025.
Recipient of the Association of Photographers Photography Practice Award 2025.
Turning Around, Turning Inwards, and Fade to Black
This work examines mourning, memory, and the cyclical nature of everyday life. The grid structure reflects the relentless patterns of routine, where the emotional weight of grief intersects with the monotony of daily existence. Subtle shifts in pose and expression within each frame highlight repetition and evoke a sense of entrapment in a cycle of loss and recollection.
The clock-like motion of time serves as a poignant reminder of its relentless passage, marking each fleeting moment as it ticks away. The gradual fade into darkness symbolises the inevitable erosion of memory, as vivid moments dissolve into obscurity. This fading process reflects the paradox of photography, its ability to preserve fleeting moments. Yet its inability to safeguard what is intangible confronts viewers with the fragility of memory and humanity’s desire to resist its fading. Printed on matte paper and mounted on board, the work asks: Can we truly preserve what we have lost, or will all memories fade to black?
The clock-like motion of time serves as a poignant reminder of its relentless passage, marking each fleeting moment as it ticks away. The gradual fade into darkness symbolises the inevitable erosion of memory, as vivid moments dissolve into obscurity. This fading process reflects the paradox of photography, its ability to preserve fleeting moments. Yet its inability to safeguard what is intangible confronts viewers with the fragility of memory and humanity’s desire to resist its fading. Printed on matte paper and mounted on board, the work asks: Can we truly preserve what we have lost, or will all memories fade to black?
Just Another Saturday Night
Just Another Saturday Night explores the pub as a post-COVID ritual space. Shot in black and white using wide-angle
lenses and flash, the series heightens gestures and expressions to reveal layered contradictions, joy and isolation, routine and performance. Influenced by the work of Nan Goldin, I began to see the pub not just as a social venue, but as a stage for unspoken emotions and collective memory. In the aftermath of lockdowns and distancing, familiar spaces took on new meaning. The camera became a way to document those shifts, capturing moments that feel both candid and charged. Through this project, I came to understand photography’s ability to echo the emotional undercurrents of shared environments. Each image holds a fragment of what we leave unsaid, offering a visual record of vulnerability, resilience, and the rituals that help us reconnect.
lenses and flash, the series heightens gestures and expressions to reveal layered contradictions, joy and isolation, routine and performance. Influenced by the work of Nan Goldin, I began to see the pub not just as a social venue, but as a stage for unspoken emotions and collective memory. In the aftermath of lockdowns and distancing, familiar spaces took on new meaning. The camera became a way to document those shifts, capturing moments that feel both candid and charged. Through this project, I came to understand photography’s ability to echo the emotional undercurrents of shared environments. Each image holds a fragment of what we leave unsaid, offering a visual record of vulnerability, resilience, and the rituals that help us reconnect.
The Pursuit of Peace |
The Pursuit of Peace is a photographic study of motion, memory, and the fragile pursuit of stillness. Using second curtain flash and slightly long exposures, each image captures fleeting figures suspended between presence and absence. In the first image, the ghostlike blur of a figure looking back while moving forward creates a feeling of emotional conflict, as if peace is being chased while also being escaped. The second image intensifies this idea, with the subject running down a winding path, the speed lines exaggerating the urgency of movement. It suggests a need to outrun something internal—perhaps fear, pressure, or past experience. The final image is quieter but no less charged. The lone figure stands almost still, but the surrounding blur makes them appear as if dissolving into the landscape. It reflects the difficulty of grounding oneself when the world, or the mind, won’t stop spinning. Together, the series speaks to peace not as a permanent state, but as something searched for, momentarily found, and often lost again. Each frame captures the emotional ambiguity of that pursuit, somewhere between movement and momentary pause.
In Between Berlin
Light Box Installation
In Between Berlin captures a rare, contemplative moment within a city steeped in memory. Taken during an early morning walk on a sleepless night while on a university trip in second year, the photograph frames a solitary runner moving quietly through Berlin’s Museum Island. The worn columns, still marked with bullet holes, stand as silent witnesses to the city’s turbulent history. They ground the image in the weight of collective memory.
Illuminated within a light box, the installation creates a sense of reverence and pause, inviting viewers to reflect on the coexistence of past and present. The lone figure becomes a quiet symbol of resilience, moving forward through a space that still bears the scars of conflict. Originally exhibited as part of Disturbing the Peace, the piece has since evolved into a standalone work. It is now showcased as an example of student practice at York St John University. In Between Berlin speaks to the delicate balance between inner stillness and historical presence. It offers a fleeting moment of calm in a place shaped by unrest.
In Between Berlin captures a rare, contemplative moment within a city steeped in memory. Taken during an early morning walk on a sleepless night while on a university trip in second year, the photograph frames a solitary runner moving quietly through Berlin’s Museum Island. The worn columns, still marked with bullet holes, stand as silent witnesses to the city’s turbulent history. They ground the image in the weight of collective memory.
Illuminated within a light box, the installation creates a sense of reverence and pause, inviting viewers to reflect on the coexistence of past and present. The lone figure becomes a quiet symbol of resilience, moving forward through a space that still bears the scars of conflict. Originally exhibited as part of Disturbing the Peace, the piece has since evolved into a standalone work. It is now showcased as an example of student practice at York St John University. In Between Berlin speaks to the delicate balance between inner stillness and historical presence. It offers a fleeting moment of calm in a place shaped by unrest.
"Left Behind"
This photograph began as a simple street observation, but the longer I sat with it, the more it reflected something deeply personal. The wheelchair, overturned, forgotten, misused, felt like a visual metaphor for disability and the way society can sometimes discard what it doesn’t fully understand or value.
As someone with dyslexia, I’ve spent years trying to mask it to fit into a world that often equates difference with deficiency. I’ve learned to blend in, to compensate, to hide. But since starting university, I’ve started to unlearn that. I’ve begun to recognise that my way of thinking is not broken. It’s just been pushed to the margins, like this wheelchair.
This image is about more than abandonment. It's about visibility. It's about how people with disabilities, visible or not, are often left behind in public, in systems, in culture. And it’s also about reclaiming that narrative. The wheelchair is not destroyed. It still functions. It just needs to be seen, acknowledged, and uprighted.
As someone with dyslexia, I’ve spent years trying to mask it to fit into a world that often equates difference with deficiency. I’ve learned to blend in, to compensate, to hide. But since starting university, I’ve started to unlearn that. I’ve begun to recognise that my way of thinking is not broken. It’s just been pushed to the margins, like this wheelchair.
This image is about more than abandonment. It's about visibility. It's about how people with disabilities, visible or not, are often left behind in public, in systems, in culture. And it’s also about reclaiming that narrative. The wheelchair is not destroyed. It still functions. It just needs to be seen, acknowledged, and uprighted.
Two photographs, taken seconds apart
Shot on a Canon AE-1 with Kodak ColorPlus 200, this image captures more than just a scene; it captures a moment already slipping away. The camera shifted slightly, tilting downward, but time shifted more. In the first frame, they lean over the railing, gazing into the river. Yet the water they see is not the same water we see. The surface they observed has already passed; by the time the second frame exposed, that river had moved on, replaced by a new surface just seconds old. What began as a photographic accident became an experiment in time and perception. Even the subtlest shift in the camera alters the entire frame. A moment’s pause is enough to transform the present into the past. There is something almost theological in that, like reaching for meaning that is always just out of reach, like grasping for a blessing or a moment of clarity, the presence of a God. You sense it, almost see it, but by the time you try to capture it, it has changed. The person leans in, searching. And so do we. Yet the river in the image is no longer the one they saw, and even that river has since moved on. Still, something lingers: a posture, a railing, a trace of stillness within the flow. What if every image is not a record of what was, but a quiet marker of what has already moved on?
An Redacted Series
This series investigates the interplay between visibility and omission, combining black-and-white photography with text that has been physically redacted. The text, originally part of a story I wrote, was cut up and turned over, then partially obscured using black blocks. Only a handful of words remain, fragments that hint at a broader narrative but never reveal it fully. Inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies (1975), the process embraces creative constraints, allowing meaning to emerge through absence.
The concept of redaction speaks to themes of censorship, forgotten memory, and the fractured nature of everyday experience. It asks viewers to confront what is withheld as much as what is shown. In a world overloaded with information, this act of reduction offers space to slow down, inspect, and interpret.
The photographs were carefully chosen to echo these ideas. Each one captures a fleeting, ambiguous moment: a petrol station at night, a half-empty glass on a wet table, a crowded train platform. Shot on a mobile phone, the images have a candid, observational quality—like moments overheard or glimpsed from the corner of your eye. Together, text and image evoke the partial stories we pass by every day, offering a quiet meditation on surveillance, absence, and the narratives we’re never fully told.
The concept of redaction speaks to themes of censorship, forgotten memory, and the fractured nature of everyday experience. It asks viewers to confront what is withheld as much as what is shown. In a world overloaded with information, this act of reduction offers space to slow down, inspect, and interpret.
The photographs were carefully chosen to echo these ideas. Each one captures a fleeting, ambiguous moment: a petrol station at night, a half-empty glass on a wet table, a crowded train platform. Shot on a mobile phone, the images have a candid, observational quality—like moments overheard or glimpsed from the corner of your eye. Together, text and image evoke the partial stories we pass by every day, offering a quiet meditation on surveillance, absence, and the narratives we’re never fully told.
Extreme Close Up
Extreme Close Up examines how memory and emotional intimacy are mediated through photographic representation. The pixelated image is a tightly cropped, zoomed-in section of the woman’s face from the framed portrait within the main scene , enlarged to the point of abstraction. This technique echoes Gerhard Richter’s blurred portraiture, where facial recognition dissolves and emotional resonance takes over. Here, the closer we get, the less we see, suggesting how memory often becomes more about feeling than clarity.
The second image, set against a black backdrop, presents a woman seated across from a framed photograph in a carefully staged, domestic tableau. Each element, the two mugs, the flowers, the symmetry, mimics a shared ritual, evoking a longing for connection with the deceased. This performative reenactment recalls Jo Spence’s use of the photographic stage as a site for personal and psychological narrative. Like Spence, I use the image not just to document, but to work through memory, grief, and familial identity. By isolating and enlarging a face already flattened by time and printing, Extreme Close Up transforms an everyday portrait into an emotional rupture, asking viewers to contend with the space between presence and absence, clarity and distortion.
The second image, set against a black backdrop, presents a woman seated across from a framed photograph in a carefully staged, domestic tableau. Each element, the two mugs, the flowers, the symmetry, mimics a shared ritual, evoking a longing for connection with the deceased. This performative reenactment recalls Jo Spence’s use of the photographic stage as a site for personal and psychological narrative. Like Spence, I use the image not just to document, but to work through memory, grief, and familial identity. By isolating and enlarging a face already flattened by time and printing, Extreme Close Up transforms an everyday portrait into an emotional rupture, asking viewers to contend with the space between presence and absence, clarity and distortion.
Aftertouch
This series responds to rare clay models by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi, sculptors of the 17th century whose works were meant to be temporary. These fragile forms, made as preparatory studies before final bronze casting, were never intended to survive. Yet centuries later, they endure, crumbly, delicate, and marked with traces of the artists' own hands.
Photographed using a fast shutter speed and second-curtain flash, these images emphasize the tension between what is fleeting and what remains. The motion blur and bursts of light introduce an almost ghostlike quality, suggesting presence that is dissolving or form that is only partially grasped.
The visual distortion speaks to themes of memory, loss, and transformation. Just as Bernini’s fingerprints are still visible in clay, these photographs act as another kind of imprint. They capture not just the statues, but their instability. Aftertouch becomes a meditation on what it means for something made to be temporary to take on permanence, and how moments, like matter, can blur, shift, and still leave a mark.
Photographed using a fast shutter speed and second-curtain flash, these images emphasize the tension between what is fleeting and what remains. The motion blur and bursts of light introduce an almost ghostlike quality, suggesting presence that is dissolving or form that is only partially grasped.
The visual distortion speaks to themes of memory, loss, and transformation. Just as Bernini’s fingerprints are still visible in clay, these photographs act as another kind of imprint. They capture not just the statues, but their instability. Aftertouch becomes a meditation on what it means for something made to be temporary to take on permanence, and how moments, like matter, can blur, shift, and still leave a mark.
Somebody I Never Knew
You see someone in motion, just for a second, half-turned in a crowd, disappearing behind a door, lit by a passing bus’s headlights. You don’t know their name, but something about that moment stays with you. A feeling. A face. A question. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they carrying that day, grief, joy, something in between? Maybe you were meant to cross paths. Maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were just written into each other’s day for a single frame, like extras in a film you'll never see again.
The city is full of moments like this. Fleeting human encounters that dissolve almost as quickly as they happen. Some are so quiet you barely notice them. Others linger unexpectedly, like the echo of a song you don’t quite remember hearing.
This work explores those brief, beautiful, and often unnoticed intersections. The strangers who pass through our lives in a blur but leave behind the outline of a story. The ones we never met, never spoke to, yet somehow, they mattered. Somebody I never knew, but can’t forget.
Two Observers
In Two Observers, two figures stand side by side, close in space yet turned slightly away from one another—mirroring the quiet paradox of being near but apart. Their umbrellas form twin domes of solitude, shielding them not just from the weather, but from the noise of the crowd ahead. They do not speak, nor do they touch, yet their shared stillness suggests a deeper, silent companionship.
Together, they observe the world unfolding at a distance. The crowd becomes a blur of motion and sound, while the observers remain rooted in thought. This act of watching from afar becomes a metaphor for reflection—for choosing observation over participation, thought over action.
Their postures suggest autonomy, but their proximity speaks to something more: the comfort of standing alone, together. A kind of emotional chiaroscuro—separate shadows cast in the same light.
In a culture that celebrates visibility and engagement, Two Observers honors the quiet moments in between—where thought lives, where connection exists without performance, and where being close doesn't always mean being the same.
Together, they observe the world unfolding at a distance. The crowd becomes a blur of motion and sound, while the observers remain rooted in thought. This act of watching from afar becomes a metaphor for reflection—for choosing observation over participation, thought over action.
Their postures suggest autonomy, but their proximity speaks to something more: the comfort of standing alone, together. A kind of emotional chiaroscuro—separate shadows cast in the same light.
In a culture that celebrates visibility and engagement, Two Observers honors the quiet moments in between—where thought lives, where connection exists without performance, and where being close doesn't always mean being the same.
16
This image was taken on my son’s 16th birthday, an age that marks a quiet and often overlooked turning point. He’s not a child anymore, but he’s not yet fully grown. In this moment, caught on a moving train, he leans into the window and gazes out—not just at the passing world, but perhaps at the uncertainty of everything to come. I didn’t ask him to pose; I saw something unfold and instinctively raised the camera. What I captured felt like more than a candid frame—it felt like a metaphor. The train is moving forward, just as he must. The world outside the window is ordinary: brick, pavement, a bit of rain. But within the frame is the complexity of becoming, of growing, hesitating, and wondering. As a father, I felt a mix of pride and melancholy. As a photographer, I was drawn to the natural light, the framing, and the way his form is cradled by shadow. But it’s the stillness that strikes me most, the sense of a breath being held between what was and what will be. This piece reflects my broader interest in moments of transition. Whether I’m exploring solitude, grief, or personal growth, I try to make visible the feelings we rarely articulate. 16 is a meditation on the threshold, a pause between stops, a glance toward the future, and a lingering farewell to the simplicity of childhood.
James in Red
James in Red captures a moment of deep immersion, where the musician is no longer performing but existing entirely within the music. The intentional blur across James’s face reflects the experience of losing yourself in the creative act, where identity begins to dissolve and the self merges with sound. This visual distortion is not about confusion, but transformation; in the chaos of motion, something honest and raw is revealed. The rich red lighting intensifies this feeling, symbolizing passion, vulnerability, and emotional depth. The photograph invites the viewer to consider how music can strip away the constructed self and expose something more authentic. In this moment, James is not simply playing the guitar — he becomes part of it, part of the performance, part of the atmosphere. It is a fleeting but powerful reminder of how art can blur the lines between self and expression, and how in losing ourselves, we often find who we really are.
The Floods
This documentary reflects on the 2019 floods in the Bentley area of Doncaster, exploring the emotional and psychological toll on residents living in flood-prone communities. Inspired by my own experience, it captures the anxiety triggered by heavy rainfall, especially during Storm Babet.
As filmmaker, I combine my own video footage and photography with found material and interviews to create a fragmented yet intimate portrait of fear, memory, and the urge to escape.
The soundtrack, composed by @jackhno_dancepunk and @RitaSays of the Bufland Beat Collective, is built from interviews about the 2019 floods—including ones I contributed to—adding a haunting rhythm to the narrative.
As filmmaker, I combine my own video footage and photography with found material and interviews to create a fragmented yet intimate portrait of fear, memory, and the urge to escape.
The soundtrack, composed by @jackhno_dancepunk and @RitaSays of the Bufland Beat Collective, is built from interviews about the 2019 floods—including ones I contributed to—adding a haunting rhythm to the narrative.
Copyright 2026
