Category: Photographers

Nikon D3 – Three month trial report

I can’t really justify getting a Nikon D3 – I’m just not making enough out of photography for my accountant (if I could afford one) to think it a good idea. But I am sorely tempted, in particular by its apparently superb performance at high ISO.

I’m not really an equipment freak – despite the fact that I have around 20 cameras of different shapes, types and sizes. Each of them was bought because it enabled me to do something a little differently – and many of them were bought cheaply second-hand. Quite a few have been used close to extinction – and would fetch nothing were I to bother to sell.

But I actually don’t like to get rid of things. Even though its several years since I used my Minolta CLE or Mamiya 7, I still feel that one day I might put a roll of film into one of them and go out on the streets again. Though it’s perhaps not really likely.

One guy who has had a D3 for 3 months is Dave Black, a great sports photographer from the USA who Nikon lent one, asking him to use it to “photograph sports under difficult low light situations in gymnasiums, ice halls and outdoor venues.” You can see some of the results and read his opinions on the camera for sports photography in this month’s ‘Workshop at the Ranch‘ feature on his web site.

Black gets really excited about the possibilities offered by this camera. He says the performance at ISO 6400 is better than the D2X at ISO 400 – more or less the same in the shadow areas, but higher quality in the lighter tones. Even at Hi1 (ISO 12,800) the quality is good enough for newspapers and magazines, although of course at lower ISOs it is better – simply stunning. He discusses some of the ways it can change the way that he works, including making it possible for him to use fast shutter speeds and a full range of apertures in shutter priority mode for events where parts of the playing area are in deep shadow, as well as being able to use slower lenses and tele-converters.

In another area of his site, this month’s ‘On the Road‘ looks at the D3 and some fashion and landscape work, including some lengthy night exposures made possible by the lack of noise.

Black sees the D3 as a quantum leap in photographic quality, a “a land mark development in photographic history” as important as “the motor drive, auto focus and even the digital revolution we enjoy today.” It’s easy to feel that he is letting himself get a little carried away, but difficult given his results not to go at least a part of the road with him.

At the moment, I’m generally happy with the results from the D200, certainly at moderate ISO, but although ISO800 is generally usable, and even ISO1250 will do with good noise reduction software, it is certainly best to stick to lowish sensitivity. Combined with a general lack of fast wide-angles, this is sometimes limiting (the 20mm f2.8 isn’t bad, even at full aperture, but isn’t particularly fast – or very wide on a DX format camera.)

What really puts me off the D3 – and why my name isn’t down on the waiting list yet – is not the cost, but the weight and bulk compared to the D200 (or D300.) I also have a feeling that a significant part of the improved image quality of the D3 isn’t actually down to the larger sensor, but to better sensor design and better processing. If I can hang on a couple of years, the D400 may be almost as good, two thirds or less of the weight and one third of the price. But of course the one confident prediction about any digital camera is that however ground-breaking it may seem now, in a few years time it will appear old-hat.

Paris Photo

Next week I’ll be at Paris Photo, a vast trade fair for galleries and publishers held in the rather claustrophobic underground Carrousel du Louvre in the centre of Paris and open to the public 15-18 November. I’m looking forward to it, but with some trepidation – last year I suffered a panic attack at one point and had to run for the fresh air.

It is big. 104 exhibitors from 17 countries – 83 galleries and 21 publishers. Some of the stands are pretty large, with hundreds of pictures on display – others smaller or having very large pictures. 40 of the best-known photographic magazines from around the world are there too, along with a special exhibition of Italian photography, and two major photographic prizes, the Prix BMW – Paris Photo and the Prix SFR Jeunes Talents (you can click on the names to see their work.) The Prix BMW, this year on the theme of ‘water’, has an illustrious list of photographers entered by the exhibitors at Paris Photo, including Alessandra Sanguinetti, Wout Berger, Trent Parke and Boris Mikhailov, and the winner will be announced at the show.

It is also an opportunity to meet many photographers, including over 30 who will be signing their books at the show. I’ll also be hoping to see a number of friends among the artists, dealers and others at the show – and perhaps even at a party or two or in one of the bars in the area around.

I’m there for 3 days – or at least parts of 3 days, as it’s best seen in a number of visits, with some time out to stroll around the city and do other things.

You can get a little idea of the range of work on show there – even if you can’t make it to Paris – by looking at the show preview on the Lens Culture site, which includes 120 images from the show, which you can see either by using the ‘next’ button or going into gallery view to see the thumbnails.

Attend a Masterclass

Sit down in front of your computer at 17:00 CET on 8 November (today, and I think that’s 16.00 GMT) and you can enjoy one of the renowned World Press Photo Joop Swart master-classes. It’s a great privilege to be one of the 12 promising young photojournalists invited to attend these classes which are given by some of the best press photographers from around the world, and this is the first occasion on which the lecture given there has been made available live to a wider audience. The address is: http://worldpressphoto.kanaal11.tv

Don’t worry if you miss it live – you will also be able to see the 1.5hr session at the site at any time from Nov 9 – Nov 15. To view the programme you will need a broadband connection and Windows Media Player, version 6.4 or later.

Giving the lecture is David Burnett. He graduated from Colorado College in political science in 1968, starting in photography the previous year as an intern at Time Magazine. He became a freelance for Time, and then for Life, at first in the USA, and then covering the Vietnam war. When Life folded , he joined the French agency Gamma. In 1976 founded the New York based Contact Press Images with Robert Pledge. He has worked in over 75 countries and as well as having his photojournalism published in all the major US and European general feature magazines and has also worked on advertising campaigns for some major clients, including Kodak and the US Army.

In 1973, Burnett, together with Raymond Depardon and Charles Gerretsen, covered the coup in Chile for Gamma, winning the ‘Robert Capa Award’ of the Overseas Press Club of America, which is given for the “best published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise. In 1979 he won the World Press Photo of the Year. He’s also been Magazine Photographer of the Year in the Pictures of the Year competition, and gained many other awards.

Some of his more interesting pictures in recent years – including a splendid image of Al Gore campaigning in 2001 – were taken with a cheap plastic Holga camera (though he did also shoot more conventionally in colour – and Newsweek apparently didn’t want to look at his black and white work.) You can see a very wide range of his work on this own web site.

Sutton Show

I don’t much relish hangings, even though fortunately those which I’ve experienced have been of an artistic nature. Today’s at Sutton Library in south London (or for those who still believe the Post Office, Surrey) was a rather lengthy slog, and the show with the hardly inspiring title ‘Eight Photographers‘ remains on show only until Nov 15th, and on the 16th gets taken down to make way for a barn dance.

So those of you inclined to venture south of the river (or who even live there) will need to get your skates on if you wish to see it (and don’t go on Monday as the library is closed.) My contribution is eight images from ‘My London Diary‘ chosen a little at random from the 24 that appeared earlier this year in ‘Another London‘ at Kingston Museum (or rather the 20 that were still in their frames, unsold.)


‘Kiss-It’ protest against violence in Mental Health treatment, London Feb 2005.

Among the other seven egos laid bare on the white walls are a number of photographers I’ve known for a long time, including Sam Tanner, whose images of his own mother’s last years are a sensitive, loving, poignant and very human document. David Malarkey has caught and enlarged the diffraction of light in a way that can be very striking, especially when glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, although they also have an unusual quality seen close to. Carol Hudson‘s four panoramic images come from her local street, and one which includes a startling pink pedestrian blur along with a static figure, other people and a bus particularly caught my attention. Tony Mayne was the only among us to have worked to give the show some particular local interest, his three blocks of nine images each showing people on the high street a few yards away. Also exhibiting are Nick Hale, Darren McCloy and Len Salem.

Sutton Library looks a superb library, in a new civic centre for the London Borough of Sutton, just off the High Street, a short walk from Sutton Station (it felt further when I was carrying 8 framed pictures.) It has a nice exhibition space, although unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a coherent arts programme there (and I certainly can’t find any details of this show on the London Borough of Sutton web site), and it is also used for other types of event – such as the barn dance. Ask Sutton not me if you want details of that.

Climate Camp

I regret not going to the Camp for Climate Action at Sipson, near Heathrow in August. Partly because I was busy with other things – no real excuse when its our only planet at risk, but also because I found the anti-photographer rhetoric put out by some of the organisers upsetting. (And of course I was there in 2003.)

Fortunately others did go and make a fine record of what went on, which was on show at The Foundry in Shoreditch last week and closes today (Sunday Nov 3.).

You can see the exhibition online and as well as the pictures, there is also some thought-provoking text about the camp, and the police reaction to it. It is important to understand that those taking part were doing nothing illegal in holding a camp and enjoyed a great deal of support from local residents.

Almost all of the disruption in the area over the week was caused by the police activities, which seriously disrupted life for those living in the area as well as the campers, as well as resulting in some delays for those flying from Heathrow. The whole policing operation – and I wrote a little about my experience of it in August – was totally out of proportion to any likely threat from those at the camp.

The decision to go ahead and build a third runway at Heathrow will almost certainly be viewed by history as the most criminally irresponsible act of the Brown government. The industry is already taking it for granted that it will go ahead. I think it is also likely to lead to the largest direct action campaign ever seen in this country – and it may even end up being Brown’s ‘poll tax’. The police were perhaps just getting in a bit of doubtfully legal advance practice.

My congratulations go to Mike Russell, Kristian Buss, Gary Austin, Jerome Dutton, Adrian Arbib, Amy Scaife and Mike Langridge for their pictures, Jody Boehnert for the exhibition design and Mike Russell for the web site.

Still on show at the Foundry (Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3JL) until Sun Nov 11 are images from the G8 events in Rostock by Paul Mattsson and Guy Smallman.

Still Life: Killing Time – Ed Clark

Last night to the Photographers’ Gallery, not for an opening but a book launch. I was greatly impressed by Edmund Clark‘s still life images from E Wing at Kingston Prison in Portsmouth when I saw them at Rhubarb Rhubarb in Birmingham this Summer, and pleased to learn from him then that they were to be published by Dewi Lewis (who was at the time reviewing portfolios at the table in front of mine.)

Some of my favourite photographs come in the opening section of ‘Let Us Know Praise Famous Men‘; a bed, its worn sheets starkly illuminated by Walker’s flash, a small bowl on a shelf, and through the doorway an oil-cloth covered table with an oil lamp in a sparsely furnished room, a pair of boots on bare-dust earth, a family’s stock of cutlery ledged behind a strip of wood. In Evans’s case there are of course also portraits, unrelenting gazes into his lenses, direct, honest (while his and James Agee’s motives were perhaps less so.) But for me it has always been the images without people that told me far more about the particular exigences of these people living on the edge of America.

Ed Clark is not Walker Evans, but these images seem to me to be in the same tradition, precisely seen and organised, recorded in detail on a large format camera (in colour rather than black and white.) And of course it is the details that matter, that grab the photographer’s and our thoughts and feelings. Among the more powerful of them are the various lists that mark out time – newspaper rotas, the day’s activities (or rather lack of), a prisoner’s handwritten lists of his lunch for the next 3 weeks, even the series of steps required to use the toilet printed in large for a senile inmate. But there are also many strong visual clues to the nature of life for those in this particular dead end (and the final image in the book shows a coffin in the crematorium chapel.)

Wisely, Ed Clark decided not to include images of the elderly “murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other violent criminals” whose time was being killed in E Wing in his project, although some were happy to be photographed. Most of them are inside for acts that we find reprehensible, although occasionally we may glimpse our own darker sides and shiver “there but for fortune...”, but despite the disgust we feel for what they have done, it is hard to look at these images and not to feel a considerable disquiet at the way that we – and our agents, the prison service – treat these elderly, sometimes senile, men.


Side of Inmate’s Cupboard (C) Edmund Clark.
We changed to decimal coinage on February 15th 1971, roughly 35 years before this picture was taken. A life sentence, ordered like the chart in neat rows.

Government and opposition eagerly scramble over each other to prove who is toughest on crime, inventing new offences, making sentences longer and longer and sending more and more to jail. We have more and more elderly prisoners, many of whom no longer present little if any real threat to the community at large, and for whom prison is an inappropriate place. As the images suggest, you don’t need 20 foot razor wire fences of its initial image for people who need a stair lift or walking frame.

E Wing was of course a small if inadequate step to care for these people within a prison system where the weak and elderly – as Erwin James points out in his afterword – are easy prey in the struggle all prisoners have to survive. And housing only 25 men it was for its 8 years of existence the only unit catering for a prison population of over 2000 over-60s.

This is a powerful book, and a disturbing one, and it deserves a wide audience, not just among those of us with an interest in photography but with all who care about the kind of society in which we live. It should be published in magazines and newspapers and other media. It’s work that thoughtfully and graphically raises important questions – but importantly without preaching or suggesting solutions. Every politician should have a copy, and think carefully about where their competition for the red-top vote is taking us.

Peter Marshall

STILL LIFE: KILLING TIME
Edmund CLARK
Dewi Lewis Publishing
Hardback, 72 pages. £16.99
43 photos, 310 x 247mm
ISBN: 9781904587538

Two exhibitions of this work have so far been confirmed:

Light House, The Chubb Buildings, Wolverhampton: 18 Jan – 12 Mar, 2008
Aspex, The Vulcan Building, Portsmouth: 1 Feb – 20 Mar, 2008

Bielsko-Biala Diary

Photo festivals tend to keep you pretty busy, with meeting and talking to other photographers, but I like to find time to take a few pictures too. While I was in Bielsko-Biala last a just over a week ago for the 2007 FotoArtFestival , I kept a diary, and took some pictures both of the place and of the festival to illustrate it.

I’ve had to censor the diary a little for publication, and get rid of the libellous remarks and wilder thoughts, but I hope there are still a few controversial passages. You can read what I really thought about some of the shows, and see a little of what photographers get up to at such events.


On my way to the theatre in Bielsko-Biala


Friday lunchtime – I was sitting next to Joan Fontcuberta and Sarah Moon


Early on Saturday morning in a smoky Gallery Wzgorge

I’ve not finished the diary – still some material from the final day of the ‘Maraton’, the final party and a couple of pieces on some of the shows to add. Then there is my own presentation, the final session in the Maraton, and I also intend to put the text and some of the pictures of it on line as well (copyright issues mean I cannot use them all – but wherever possible I’ll link to the same or similar images.)

All the pictures I made in Poland were using a Fuji Finepix F31fd. Would I buy one again? Probably not, but some of them aren’t bad. But not having a viewfinder is still a pain.
You can also read the diary – and some of my presentation – from the 2005 FotoArtFestival on line.

ROOF UNIT at [ space ]

First I’d better declare an interest. Actually I’m not sure I need to. This is – I hope – a very personal blog, one that reflects my own personal involvement in the medium of photography, and my conviction that if it isn’t personal, it isn’t worth saying (or photographing.)

But I was at [ space ] in Hackney on Friday night partly because my own work was appearing in the ‘Roof Unit Foundations’ show there, though I would have gone in any case to see the Brian Griffin show also opening there (see separate article.) My pictures in it are ones I now feel a certain distance from, as I took them in 1983.

Roof Unit is a group of photographers based in a former soap factory in the East End. I met one of them, Toby Smith, at an ‘Olympic Symposium’ held at [ space ], an arts complex in Hackney, in June, (where I also saw what will almost certainly be the best film to come out of the London 2012 Olympics.)

Toby talked at the symposium about his bid for a photographic contract for the games, made together with Photofusion, based in Brixton. I contribute work to the Photofusion library and I’ve been connected with it – if fairly peripherally – since its earlier incarnation in Webbs Road when I joined a ‘Men’s Group’ run by Crispin Hughes.

I met Toby again at a Photofusion opening on the day before the contract was announced (it didn’t go to Photofusion, although their bid was credible enough to get to the final stages) and naturally talked to him about my work in the Olympic area and the Lower Lea generally since the early 1980s. He was interested and later took a look at my River Lea site, and I was delighted to be invited to take part in the Roof Unit show in Hackney with a group of 4 colour pictures from those I had made around 1983.

This is a picture from the edge of the main Olympic site, and a scene that when I saw it made me exclaim ‘Man Ray’, although I have really no reason to think the wrapped object is a sewing machine. I’ll put the other 3 of my images at the bottom of this piece :


Bromley by Bow, 1982.
Lightjet print on dibond, 30x20cm. Peter Marshall

Back in April this year, after I’d photographed the Manor Gardens Allotments – now sadly lost to the Olympic juggernaut – I wrote: “part of the charm of the allotments at the moment is that they are a little run-down and the plot-holders huts have a very personal and rather heath-robinson quality. a still life photographer could spend their life here and never exhaust the subject matter.” The three images by Gesche Wurfel provide a powerful illustration of the fact, working precisely and in square-format colour. I particularly liked Shed 2, with its perfect balance between inside and outside lighting connecting the interior with the allotments and its use of colour, particularly the glowing orange plastic spade, the reds of the window frame and the yellow hedge outside.

Rita Soromenho‘s bunch of dandelion heads collected on a walk by the Lea were also glorious for their colour and richness, transmuting these wild and so-common plants into an image of sumptuous beauty. The fine detail and glow against the black background produced in this image made on a scanner gives an amazing realism.

Jason Larkin adds a touch of human interest in his two pictures taken in one of the many small factory units on the site. Heads peer out between stacked white boxes of scotch salmon, and a crudely tattooed hand cuts through a slice of rich orange fish. Of course all of the work on show implies human presence, whether in the eerie night-time pylons of Anthony Marsland (one suspects putting the cables underground was a decision made largely on doubtful aesthetic grounds) or the goal-posts of East Marsh by Mark King, seen in dramatic light and one of a number of sporting facilities to be lost during the Olympic development, in this case I think for a coach park.

Chris Littlewood’s three Ebb and Flow images show the patterns left by the rise and fall of water and waste, soon to be a thing of the past above in the site area with the building of a lock on the Prescott Channel, which may enable the use of barges to carry away spoil from the building sites, but perhaps more importantly will protect the delicate noses of the athletes and corporate guests for whom the Olympics is staged from the sewage sometimes carried upstream on the tide.

Reinaldo Loureiro‘s untitled C-type print reminded me of the travellers caravans I was invited into for tea many years ago when helping to protect them from police harassment in Manchester. The same mixture of kitsch religious images, plastic flowers and everyday life – in this case a plate of biscuits and a beer can. Toby Smith‘s Silo 7 is very much the kind of view of derelict industry that has excited some of my own work over the years, and I would have welcomed seeing more of his work, even if that meant smaller prints. Jon Wyatt‘s panoramic image of the ‘Greenway’, the path on the Northern Sewage Outfall, shows it in dramatic light with a fine mass of grey clouds. I wasn’t sure whether it might have been improved by rather less of the brown of the path in the foreground, but perhaps this was a deliberate reference to what lay under the photographers feet on its route to Beckton.

Outside in the corridor are two large light boxes with Duratran lambda prints by Allesandra Chila. These ‘Olympian Visions’ were (I think) of a group of volunteers tidying up one of the filter beds of a former water works and a view over the rooftops of Hackney Wick. I’m not sure exactly from where this was taken, but many of us will have spent considerable time waiting for Silverlink and contemplating a rather similar view. Although I found these prints impressive, I also felt a little disappointment when I moved in for a closer view, which gave me grain or texture rather than the greater detail for which I had hoped.

Also in the show were Peter Ainsworth, with an image of fridges piled up behind a wall and a white van parked in front, Sophie Gerrard with a picture of a lock-keepers house on the Bow Back Rivers (an interesting lock, recently restored,) and Wendy Pye, whose Ipod slideshow gave us some fleeting glimpses around Marshgate Lane and the Old River Lea; too fleeting for me – I would have liked to see more images and a slightly slower presentation rate.

It’s an interesting show, combining a variety of approaches to the area, much of which will disappear and whose whole character will be changed over the next few years, a change which I can only view with considerable regret.


The Lea Navigation carried timber to many timber yards. Upper Edmonton, 1983.
Lightjet print on dibond, 20x30cm. Peter Marshall


Ponders End, 1983.
Lightjet print on dibond, 20x30cm. Peter Marshall


Hackney Wick, 1983.
Lightjet print on dibond, 20x30cm. Peter Marshall

Brian Griffin: The Water People

One of the things that I admire about Brian Griffin’s work is that he takes what could be dull, commercial projects and turns them into something personal and exciting. In his early years it was his portraits of businessmen.

If you have the misfortune to read any of the business press or by mistake open the business section of your newspaper rather than send it directly to recycling, you can unfortunately find too many tedious suits, often supplied by company PR who generally have as much imagination as the typical woodlouse.That you will also sometimes come across some more interesting photography probably owes a great deal to the example of his work, inspiring other photographers.

A commission by Reykjavik Energy in Iceland could have been boring. Brian has turned it into a mythical narrative, based very loosely on Jules Verne’s ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth‘, in which he undertakes a dangerous journey to discover the city of the water people, who he then photographs. Two of the more interesting images in the show for me are of structures which I assume belong to Reykjavik Energy which suggest a different science fiction, clearly the alien landing craft.

The portraits of the water people are I think taken through sheets of glass with water or other more viscous clear liquid on them to give distortion effects. Years ago I had a box of sheets of various patterned glass samples some of which could also produce similar – but generally more regular – effects when used close to the lens.

It was a nice opening at [ space ], where it is on show together with water medallions by Brynja and in the next-door gallery Roof Unit Foundations, all running until 15 December 2007. I’m pleased to report that the opening was liberally supplied not with water but with Pilsner Urquell, one of the great bottled beers. Such a change from the brew at London’s best known photography space.

Brian also has another show in London at the moment – Teamphoto, which I’ve written about previously – at the (German) Gymnasium at St Pancras until Novermber 19, celebrating the great achievement of adding 20 minutes to my travel time to Paris. I’ll try out the new service in a few weeks on my way home from Paris Photo.

Water Portraits

Last week I spent some time with another photographer of ‘water people’, Alex ten Napel, whose work I’ll write about shortly. His approach to water portraits is more direct, getting his subjects (or helping them) to duck under water just before he photographs them, standing in the swimming pool.

Paul Trevor at Rich Mix

Last week I got e-mail from Paul Trevor and realised I’d not actually been able to see his work when I called in at Rich Mix Cultural Foundation on the Bethnal Green Road at the top of Brick Lane – and I’ve since met several people who had the same experience as me.

Paul contacted the gallery after hearing from me, and whether as a result or otherwise, when I called in there on Friday, things were very different. I went down the stairs again and sat on the old sofa, and enjoyed around 300 of Paul’s pictures on the large display screen, projected at roughly six second intervals in a show lasting roughly 30 minutes.

As I sat down, one of his pictures from the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘ was on screen, and what followed was a kaleidoscope of life from London’s East End in all its rich diversity. Of course many of the pictures were familiar to me – including some of the half dozen or so I’d featured in the London Arts Cafe show a few years ago, as well as those I’d seen in various shows and publications over the years, but there was also a great deal of work new to me.

The images in the display were a selection from the 5000 scanned from Paul’s contact sheets by the London Metropolitan University as the initial step in a project to produce 500 high quality scans for his Eastender Archive. Paul obviously took rather more care over his contact than some photographers (me for example!) but there were still some that were a little too light or dark, as well as those for which a straight unmanipulated print cannot do justice. The scans were of surprisingly high quality – considerably better than those I made of my own contacts for my very first CD project, ‘London Pictures 1992’, made in 1993 when I found that none of the clients I gave the CD to had the equipment to play it. Technology has moved on considerably since then! Contacts from 35mm are 1.5×1″, and a scan at 1200 dpi gives a 1800×1200 pixel image, sufficient for most display devices.

The sofa and screen are in a hole down a set of stairs from the main floor level. There are now two large projected images on the walls above this, one at the side and one on the back wall. Although the quality of these large projections is still rather washed out – even in the dull light of approaching dusk that I was there, at least the projectors are now set up correctly without the distortion of aspect ratio and keystoning apparent in my previous vision, and the images are shown on a blank wall avoiding the ventilation duct that formed a part of every image previously,

Its a shame that my write-up here – and in my previous piece has had to concentrate so much on the practicalities rather than the images. But this is only an initial stage in the project. Paul Trevor’s work in the East End of London is certainly one of the most significant bodies of documentary work produced in the UK in the era and deserves considerably more care and respect than was shown by the gallery – and a much fuller treatment by critics – including myself – at a later date when the project is in a more complete form.

There were a few pictures in those I watched that I would be surprised to find in the final cut, knowing something of the strength and depth of Paul’s work. A few perhaps where his feeling for the people or the place or the occasion is stronger than the photographic representation, as well as a little duplication, but the overall impression is hardly diminished.

There were many places and situations that I recognised, and some – in particular the anti-racist demonstrations – where I was scanning the image to see if I was visible, at the time more as a participant than a photographer. I didn’t find myself, but Paul’s work forms a very recognisable and very intimate view of an East End that I’ve only really glimpsed over the years as an outsider.

So, get along to Rich Mix and see the show – its on until 30 Nov, and Paul’s work is by far the most interesting show in London at the moment.