Ethics & Community

Photography is an encounter.

My work is built around people, places, identity, movement, intimacy and the strange ways our lives cross one another.

Documentary photography asks for proximity to other people’s worlds. I don’t take that access lightly.

The people in my photographs are not content.

They are people.

Representation

I believe photography can question assumptions rather than reinforce them.

A photograph cannot tell us everything about a person. Appearance does not tell us someone’s gender, history, identity, intentions or worth.

Much of my work exists inside that uncertainty.

I approach documentary photography with respect for the dignity and context of the people I photograph.

Documentary images can exist within complicated social, historical and personal circumstances. If you appear in my work and have a serious concern about how an image of you is being presented or used, you are welcome to contact me.

Being open to that conversation does not automatically mean that an image will be removed.

It does mean that I will listen.

Community

The spaces around my work, physical and digital, should allow curiosity, disagreement and conversation without dehumanising people.

Racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, harassment, threats and targeted abuse are not welcome in spaces I control.

I reserve the right to moderate or remove abusive participation where necessary to protect those spaces and the people within them.

Photographs are not raw material

The fact that an image can be found online does not make it free to use.

Please do not reproduce, publish, sell, modify or commercially use my photographs without permission.

I also do not consent to my photographs, writing or other original work being scraped or collected for the purpose of training generative AI systems, creating machine-learning datasets or producing derivative synthetic imagery, except where such use is expressly permitted by applicable law or separately authorised by me.

If you want to use something, ask.

Sometimes the beginning of a collaboration is simply a conversation.

The X

The X in my work is a mark.

A challenge to assumptions.

A meeting point.

A crossroads.

The unknown.

A signature.

And multiplication.

It is also a reminder that what we see is not necessarily what we know.

Photography has enormous power to categorise people. I would rather use it to question those categories, to leave space between seeing someone and deciding that we know who they are.

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