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Tube Portraits 2008 – 2010

A project I have been working on since 2008 is to take portraits of Tube travellers. As long as you keep your camera ready in your hand at all times, commuting offers many opportunities to capture the variety of people living in the city. Of course, people do not always like to be photographed and it is important either to ask their permission or to take pictures as unobtrusively as possible. One trick I have learned is to point the lens at them and shoot without looking through the lens, simply estimating the distance and angle as the camera hangs down by my side.

I am inspired by the great variety of people I see, representing types and characters from many different periods and places. My knowledge of traditional paintings and sculpture sometimes makes me recognise mythical ‘archetypes’ in the people I see: the giant carrying the world on his shoulders, the mediating shaman, the trickster, the innocent hero, and so on.