In 1996 I graduated at the Manchester Metropolitan University with a 2:1 (hons) degree in Photography & Digital Imaging. The following year I completed a Masters degree in Communication Design. Since completing my degree, I have completed various personal projects. I have also taught in several different areas of education, including secondary, sixth form, adult, and further and higher education. I have also worked extensively with hard to reach and excluded young people. Between the years 2003 - 2005 I qualified as a teacher, completing a PGCE. Between the years 1997 and 2007 I conducted an action research programme about stereotypes and the inner city. This research culminated in 2007, when I was awarded a Wingate Scholarship. During my scholarship I self published the photographic book, 'On Class Street' (click on link on left). This website shows various bodies of my photographic work. I have not shown all of my work but just a sample so that you can get an idea of the type of imagery that I create.
 

My personal work in photography and design has been focused across a wide spectrum. Some of my work has been studio based but mostly I use natural light. I have extensively photographed the city in which I grew up, the surrounding countryside and coastal towns in Wales. My work in the countryside and coastal towns has helped me to develop 'the art of seeing' as well as the 'art of creating'.
 

It is true that there is so much outstanding beauty in the countryside, and on the coast. This beauty is in a constant transition, through deterioration, decay and rebirth. Each new visit to the same part of the beach, or the same beauty spot in the countryside, can bring with it subtle or dramatic changes. The same is also true of the inner city. The city is awash with symbols and of beauty, albeit a different kind of beauty than one would find in the countryside. The changes that occur in the city come and go much quicker than they do in the countryside.
 

By developing my understanding of past and contemporary practitioners I have been able to develop my own personal style. My love and appreciation of the beauty in the countryside and coastal areas stem from my experiences as a youth, growing up in abject poverty meant that I rarely got to see much countryside, even though it was only a short bus ride away.
 

As a photographer, I have found myself spending hour upon hour in the countryside (and enjoying it) experimenting with the changes of light (natural or mechanical) and film speed, looking for or trying to create the perfect photograph. Photographing what can seemingly be the most mundane objects can often reap great rewards. These experiences have heightened my sense of awareness, and just as important, have helped to develop me personally and professionally. As I developed my intellectual understanding of photography, the viewers' response to, and interpretation of photographs started to interest me more. Photography is not an uncomplicated mirror of reality; it is a relationship between the viewers' imagination and the indexical, iconic and symbolic components contained within the image, a kind of bonding occurs between artists expression and viewers interpretation
 

Remembering my experiences of inner city life, instead of trying to forget them, has reinforced my affinity with the inner city. When I return to photographing aspects of the inner city, after being in the countryside, my senses are bombarded with limitless photographic possibilities, from innumerable symmetrical buildings, monuments, even the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The city offers so much photographic potential, for those that look closely. Take as an example this image of graffiti underneath a billboard that displays an Irn Bru advertisement. The instant I saw it, it took hold of my imagination. I knew that composed in the right way, the resultant photograph would create a new meaning. One that was unique and obvious, not just to me but also to viewers of my photograph. The graffiti and the advertisement are both signifiers in their own right yet simultaneously worked together to form a sign. On its own, the graffiti does not have the same connotations, neither does the advertisement. Both are simple advertisements, simple statements. Both are rhetorical! Yet, when viewed as one, a new sign and new meaning emerges.
 

The differences between my personal experiences and memories of inner city Manchester, its urban landscape and its inhabitants and the way that they have been represented in photographs through various media was the primary catalyst within me, which made me want to engage with a photographic practice which included diverse discourse such as, theology, politics, arts, sociology and criminology, and psychology. This awareness and knowledge allowed me to create photographs that have 'intertextuality'. Staging and photographing a unique moment that underpins the whole ethos of intertextuality and photographs, can often be an emotional and mental challenge.

My camera has taken me on a variety of journeys. Some of these journeys took me to places where general members of the public would not usually be allowed into, especially those with a camera. Sometimes, I encountered personal contradictions and complexities when making my photographs. Mostly, I did not want to misrepresent the people whose story I was telling through photography. It was difficult to take photographs 'objectively', and without emotion. I started to think about the disparate visual representations, histories and tribulations of working class people within both academic discourse and mass media. My personal and academic development within higher education helped me to develop a practice that now engages me within both picture making and research; it was here that a symbiosis took place between my photographic practice and research.
 

Sometimes, my practice has explored the boundaries between creative and documentary photography in both a historical, and cultural sense. It has been about thinking and looking carefully, as much as crafting a moment that symbolizes something other than the obvious. At other times, it has been about making photographs that represent an 'inner self' through symbolic representation. Essential to this exploration has been an inspection of the works of many photographers, creatives', and theoreticians. My influences have been many, my inspiration is my love of photography as an art form. Often, when I am creating images that have people in them, I use 'models', not professional ones but 'models' that I can recompense by giving them a free photographic shoot. Some of my photographs suit a photo story layout whilst others work quite well by themselves, frozen moments that reflect mutual elements of documentary realism and psychological ambiguities.
 

The work of photographers will usually be seen either as 'art' or 'documentary', or to put it bluntly, those who are recognised with having an ability to 'see' or those who simply 'record'. Recognising the distinction between metaphoric and metonymic signification in an image can sometimes be difficult. Some photographs, whilst seemingly belonging to the documentary genre can in fact be quite the opposite. I would agree with Aniela Jaffe, and say that a photograph can have a combined artistic side and a documentary side. Jaffes' exhilarating writing on symbolism and art praises the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, stating his work combines the reunion of sensory and imaginative styles, and quite rightly so. In my view, the work of Cartier Bresson has been a driving force and most influential in the wider development of creative photography and also, I'm proud to say, in my own work. Mostly I have self funded my various photographic projects. My dedication to my work is, at the end of the day, reflected in the quality and impact of the body or single photographs that I have created.