XANDER S KLISZYNSKI
A BODY OF WORK

About the work

About the work

Published/Featured —

Guardian Newspaper (print & online)
TV Canada (Claire Obscura)
Saatchi Online
Digital Photography Magazine
EasyJet In-flight Magazine

 

Exhibited—

Photographers’ Gallery, London
Annenberg Space for Photography, LA
Trueman Brewery, London
Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge
Cass Gallery, London

 

 

ABOUT THE WORK - NOTES FROM THE ARTIST

‘It is my belief that visual art should not need to be accompanied by an explanation, by an essay that needs to be read before the viewer can be moved or begin engaging with the work. I like to use the analogy of music as an example: Just like you no doubt, when I hear music that moves me, I don’t even think (let-alone worry) about explanations. The song, the tune, might make me want to dance, to rage against the machine, to remember fondly, to cry, to smile, or even to think. But it is a sensory and visceral experience firstly, to which I may or may not apply an intellectual justification later.

Similarly, I have always wanted to make only visual art that is in this way accessible and non-exclusive. Of course, this is not the same as it being universally liked or appreciated, especially when the work deals with contentious social issues. Not that my primary desire is to shock or disturb either. Rather, my aim is to make work that is authentic to the thoughts and feelings that inspired it, and to make work that is true enough to itself to stand for itself. In this way, the work can go on to have a life of its own and a relationship with the audience beyond my influence as its maker.

On the other hand, art is made within, and in response to personal, social context, gestating and being born into its own time. Knowledge of this context can function as a lens through which to view the work and the social environment to which it was responding. Insight of this kind only becomes of greater and greater service the further removed one becomes from a works inception, creation, and release into the world.

Considering this fact, and that the earliest work here now dates back two decades - as I write this in March of 2025 - I wanted to shed some light on the context in which the work was made. In doing so, my hope is that the viewer of the work can more easily make sense of the work and have their own relationship with it informed by an understanding of the world that co-created it.

As I set out in the first paragraph here, I shall resist attempts to explain what the work means as I want the viewer to have their own relationship with the work, their own response, and to derive their own meaning and value (if any) found in the work. For me it has been a measure of the success of the work that numerous people have found meaning and value in the work, long after even its period of peak exposure and coverage. Also, the fact that it has frequently divided opinion and instigated vigorous debate, (all entirely without my input) is a mark for me of its effectiveness. Aside from this however, it is not for me to judge its value to others.

But enough preamble…

The Early Noughties (2000’s) Britain: Lads’ Mags, Reality TV, Cool Britania, Degrees of Debt and Consumerism.

Looking back now to this period in recent history, especially from the perspective of today’s much harsher and more polarised times, the early 2000’s appears even more to be somewhat decadent and hedonistic. Prior to the financial crash of 2008, before the bubble burst, Britain seemed drunk on consumerism fueled by cheap credit and buoyed by the stability and relatively progressive nature, of Blair’s centrist (New) Labour Government. We were riding high, important in Europe and even North America with the cultural phenomenon of Cool Britania, exporting Brit-Pop bands such as Oasis (a sort of Beatles tribute group) across the Atlantic - and bizarrely having it mirrored back to us by Hollywood in the likes of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films (which also included the sort of innuendo and raunch familiar to Brits from the popular Carry On Films of the sixties and seventies).

The more progressive and inclusive approach of Labour, especially compared to the Thatcher reign, was the backdrop for increasing use of the term Political Correctness (or PC for short) in the media and popular discourse. Used pejoratively as an insult and usually aimed at those on the left or institutions such as the BBC aiming to use more inclusive language, this trend signaled the beginnings of what a decade or so later come to be known as Culture Wars.

Appropriately,  and in the spirit of balance, while I have referenced the BBC here, they did try and do their bit to please everybody, and though the language of the news for example might have been deemed too worthy or PC by some, ratings-leading shows from the BBC such as Top Gear  remained bastions of boisterous boyishness with Jeremy Clarkson being almost a poster-boy for non-PC behaviour (eventually getting sacked for punching the producer that provided for him a sandwich supper instead of a hot meal).

It was also one of Blair’s tenants that University Education should be open (and even aspired to) by all of undergraduate age, and not preclude those to whom it might have seemed unaffordable or unattainable previously – although it would mean tens of thousands of pounds in debt for the student and, unless they could rely on the bank of mum and dad, working more than was desirable to support their self while studying. But what the hell, buy now, pay later and with the promise of a glittering career at the end of it - why not. Freshers fairs, student nights and, in marketing terms “The Student Pound”; Hope, optimism, dreams and promises yet to be broken.

Of course, behind the scenes not all was rosy with the starting of illegal wars, sale of Britain’s Gold Reserves and the conservative opposition continually framing Blair’s government as “Champagne Socialists”. But that was behind the scenes and culturally we were more interested in the surface and the superficial. And with cheap credit and rampant capitalism on the high street, we could feel and look rich (even if we weren’t) and be dressed to the nines in fast-fashion knockoffs of that year’s emperor’s new clothes.

Reality TV shows such as Big Brother were national (and global) phenomena creating Celebrities out of ordinary people, famous and celebrated it seemed for only being famous and perhaps some sort of hyperbolic caricature - the gay, the trans, the nasty ex-private school boy - but especially the partially dressed, bronzed, toned, bleached, plumped, and pumped young male and female eye-candy. Literally like a modern-day Victorian Freakshow on steroids (and silicone). This has since been distilled to its “sex sells” essence in the more recent phenomena of Love Island and the like, giving a new meaning to the phrase “survival of the fittest” that might have Darwin turning in his grave. But nonetheless, the sexualized body as commodity was undoubtedly a valuable hook on which to hang Big Brother’s value for viewers.

And that brings me nicely to the meat of the matter. Lads’ Mags. Glossy, heavy, and expensively produced men’s magazines such as GQ had long been a staple of the magazine racks. Sure, a bikini clad female celebrity might feature on the front or across a few pages inside but while acknowledging the “sex sells” mantra, these men’s magazines wanted to be, and be thought of, as classier than only that. If the glossy women’s lifestyle magazines intended to be templates for what women could aspire to be, then the men’s equivalents were equally aspirational. The implicit promise of both was one of sophistication, of reaching ever upward to some notional perfect femininity or masculinity, however artificial these aspirations might have been.

The early Noughties saw challengers to the old guard of men’s lifestyle glossies however, especially in the form of Loaded. This glossy monthly seemed to want to reflect and celebrate how it saw its readers (their base instincts at least) rather than claim to guide them and help polish them into more socially acceptable archetypes. Boozing, boobs and getting-away-with-it were go, as the brakes were let off from libido, soft misogyny and eternal adolescence. With more soft porn and a tone that talked to, rather than down to their readers, Loaded and FHM seemed examples of a hybrid between Playboy - which having serious articles as well as naked women, liked to claim higher cultural credentials than being just a porn mag - combined with those British tabloid newspapers which sported half-naked glamour girls and purported to speak to the everyman.

With the nation’s self-confidence high and men able to enjoy apparent wealth, perhaps it is no surprise that these titles, these Lads’ Mags, which affirmed them and their entitlement, rather than asked more of them, were such a success. The popularity of these soft-core glossy monthlies led to more cheaply produced and even more sensationalist weekly publications such as Nuts and Zoo. I remember how I was disturbed by the placement of the provocative and intentionally titillating weekly Lads’ Mags on the lower racks at News Agents’, at child’s-eye height. It seemed (and still does seem) wrong to me to normalize in our children the objectification of the female body for the male gaze. Born as I was in the mid-seventies and with a second-wave feminist as a single mother it seemed like a retrograde move.

What I found most curious however was the degree to which so many young women of the time seemed to embrace the role and the position in the male gaze set out for them in these magazines. A prime example of this was FHM Magazine’s High Street Honey’s regular feature and competition, where ordinary girls were nominated and pictured (scantily clad) with the prospects of winning further exposure (in every sense of the word) and fame via the plaudit and publication. I am far from being a prude but just as I struggled with the lowest-common-denominator approach of beer, boobs and football to masculinity, I struggled with the phenomenon of young women embracing the reduction of women to tits, ass and pouting beauty. It seemed again to be a reversal of the notion of progress I had grown up with; that striving for greater equality of power, opportunity and self-determination across genders was a positive thing.

But “Hang on!” I hear you cry, “Is it not an act of self-determination for these young women to participate in this way, if they have it and want to flaunt it?” Well maybe, but how true is this if it is men, and not women, that largely own the means of production, set the rules of the game and take the lion’s share of profit? Again, I am no prude, and it is not my place to tell a woman what to do or what not do with her body, but I am interested in what we can learn about ourselves when we look closely, as an anthropologist might, into the mirror of our culture and its artifacts.

While it may be a cultural truism that female, youth, beauty and sexual availability (all synonymous with fertility and good breeding potential) are a currency, in the same way male wealth and status are, does this mean the phenomena should be beyond critique? And if the prolific and titillating images promising sex, only ever promise it and never deliver, are the images about sex at all, or are they about the power of causing an effect, the gratification of being seen and recognized as conforming? Perhaps this was all about our vanity and our wish-fulfilment, surface over substance once again.

Along with the phenomenon of Lads’ Mags, this period saw the rise of men’s fitness magazines such as Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness, glossy monthly’s again that prostelytised the male body beautiful. Topless male models adorned the covers and the pages within, usually with body-fat percentages dangerously low and likely impossible to sustain while remaining healthy. And these magazines were not for the niche of muscle fetishists that the hardcore body building mags catered for, these were mass-market propositions. Simply by buying them men could signal to the world - and perhaps just as importantly to themselves - that they cared about physical self-improvement. But if these magazines helped to turn the male body into a commodity, a process normalised already for the female body, didn’t this again represent progress and equality? Or was it leveling down rather than leveling up?

I couldn’t help but suspect that the return to the emphasis of a laddish machismo was in some way a backlash to feminist progress made in previous decades and also the de-industrialisation of the UK and undermining of Trade Union power that had been synonymous with the Thatcher era before. It seems reasonable to imagine that these phenomena could have had an emasculating affect on the male population.

And that was the cultural milieu of the first several years of the 2000’s. And those were the sorts of questions I was considering while making the work of that period.

As a footnote to this account of the cultural landscape, it is also worth mentioning the photographic technology of the time. In the very early 2000’s digital photography was in its infancy and in both commercial and fine-art realms, the highest quality results were still those delivered by images captured on medium and large format analogue film. These could be scanned and digitized for “improvement” in software, work that was previously done in the darkroom by master printers. The manipulation and distortion of the photographic image is just about as old as photography itself. However, there is no doubt that the digitization of images into binary code, and the development of image editing software and then digital image capture revolutionized the ability to edit, manipulate and re-engineer photographs unleashing a potential not available before. It might seem alien now in our always-on, always-connected world were digital-image saturated social media drives continual content consumption, but in the early noughties, this was all still waiting in the wings of history’s stage. TV, Cinema, and Magazines ruled the roost in terms of mass visual culture. How things would change.

My post-crash Britain, 2008-2009: Less frivolity, more introspection, things are getting serious now.

Progressive changes made under Blair included reform to the House of Lords limiting Hereditary Peers, introduction of The Freedom of Information Act, and extending Civil Partnerships to include same-sex couples. But by 2007 and mired in scandal for taking Britain to war in Iraq, Blair was replaced by Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party and subsequently Prime Minister. Despite Brown being considered a safe pair of hands having reigned over a prior period of prosperity, he lacked the charisma to instill confidence in the country as leader. And while it would be unjust to blame Labour or Brown for the financial crash of 2008, the history records may well best recall Brown’s premiership for his bailing out of the failing banks while ordinary people in Britain were largely left to flounder.

For further context, my wife who I’d met in 2005 and married in the spring of 2007 was working as a commercial property solicitor. We’d bought a modest ex-local authority bungalow in a quiet and picturesque village just ten miles outside of the small city with its “dreaming spires” that we’d previously called home. While continuing to do some part-time teaching of digital photography and image editing, I spent much of 2007/8 singlehandedly modernising our little house.

Knocking out the dividing wall from the small, south-facing kitchen at the back to the good-sized but dingy living room at the front, fitting a bright, new, kitchen and continuing the new flooring throughout the now open-plan area, significantly improved the ease of use, sense of space and allowed light to flood through into the front room. A new suite of sanitary ware in the tiny bathroom was not too big a job for me either, and with the two of us jointly doing the tiling in there and painting throughout the rest of the house, we soon had a modern and cosy home.

With private commissions for photography work only trickling in and teaching remaining part-time and seasonal, I took employment in 2008 as a portrait photographer in a local high-street studio.  Ultimately the sausage-factory environment of the portrait studio was not fulfilling though, and I knew my real potential lay in consolidating my university teaching experience into a career. In 2009 and encouraged by the success of the work I’d made previously; I enrolled on a master’s degree to develop my themes further. The plan was to keep up the part-time teaching alongside private photographic commissions while studying, with a view to seeking a full-time teaching post and/or teacher-training in 2010 with an MA and further artistic practise and exhibitions under my belt.

Life seemed to be going reasonably well for us, lots of hard work lay ahead, but we were settled and had a plan. Why not start trying for our first child? So much for the best laid plans though; things were about to change. Due to the slowdown in the property market following the financial crash, my wife was made redundant by the firm she had recently started working for. Still being subject to her probationary period, she was given only short notice. Frustratingly we received this difficult news the same week we found out we were going to have a baby. It was a week of mixed blessings.

Just like the property market, the job market was grinding to a halt. There were limited opportunities in property law and my wife had anyhow been tiring of the sometime toxic working environment of law firms – being a good-enough lawyer to make it as a managing partner, did not necessarily equate to being good at managing people – we agreed it would be better for her to find work outside of law. Fortunately, she had a second career up her sleeve having also previously trained as a mental health nurse and worked her way up to Ward Sister (she’s a high achiever). She took on some “bank” nursing work – the equivalent in the NHS of working for a temping agency in the private sector but for nurses and covering leave, absences and staff shortages as required.

I sought additional work too and was also fortunate to be able to approach an ex-employer with whom I’d made a good impression in a previous temporary contract. Initially this was just in the inbound call-center, fitting in as many shifts as I could around my ongoing MA and teaching commitments. As I knew the business well already, it was an advantage not having the steep learning curve of a completely new role with everything else I had going on. This familiarity also allowed me to progress more quickly into outbound sales and increase my earning potential which was very much welcome.

While it was a boon that my wife could very easily start getting regular shifts, the downside of the bank-nursing work was that she would not qualify for anything other than statutory maternity pay. Our baby was due in December 2009, and I would still have a few months of MA to get through.

So, although I don’t think I was aware of it then, it is hard not to wonder with the benefit of hindsight if this change in circumstances, the change in the social, economic and personal environment led to a change in the tone of my work. While I wanted to continue exploring the objectified body, I now included myself in one set of images, and in other images shifted my focus from contemporary mass culture to high culture, via past icons of painting and fine-art photographic aesthetics and techniques.

Of course, the objectification of the body in art and culture is not a new thing. I was certainly aware of trying to explore new territory, but perhaps looking back now, I was also responding to the cultural change in Britain and elsewhere. A change that reflected the end of the good times, the end of the hedonism and self-satisfied national identity instigated by a change in the economic weather. Maybe it is no surprise that I turned my attention to established tropes of high art and the status quo of the old guard.

My wife and I were blessed with an incredible baby daughter in December 2009. With the responsibility as primary breadwinner now shifting to me, I continued to work my way up the corporate ladder. This sadly meant my career in making and teaching art was postponed, but on the positive side, my wife and I created a second amazing daughter, born in September of 2011.

Lost in Britain 2010-2022: Redundant, broken, torn apart and patched back up.

During the years of my hiatus from making artwork things changed even more radically, both socially and personally. The inevitable fall of New Labour came in the 2010 election being replaced by a coalition government of Cameron’s Conservatives, propped up by Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Clegg had been kingmaker by default with neither Labour nor the Conservatives having sufficient majority for a decisive win. Despite New Labour’s centrist, relatively pro-business stance, I suspect it was clear to Nick Clegg that he would be too much the second fiddle if he partnered with them, with little chance of any of his own policies seeing the light of day. The trade unions after all were still fundamental to the funding of the Labour party.

Not that the pairing with David Cameron did Clegg much good in the final analysis either. For many people, Clegg’s most memorable legacy from that term with Cameron was his betrayal to the students - from whom he had attracted votes - by failing to deliver on his promise to banish university tuition fees. With the country still reeling in the aftermath of the 2008 crash and the Conservative’s majoring on their message of fiscal responsibility in their campaign, we then saw Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne introducing austerity measures. These measures continued throughout successive terms and slashed government spending to many of the vital services that function like the major organs of a country and often most keenly felt by the most vulnerable in society. Government debt was bad and had to be reduced; never mind the all too easy to make analogy of kicking a person when they are down.

Austerity was a bitter pill for the electorate to swallow, especially as they had seen the bankers that Labour had bailed out getting away with it. Thatcher had notoriously asserted there was “no such thing as society” in extolling the virtues of individualism to erode the safety of public services. Camerons government on the other hand, promoted the idea of the “Big Society” asserting that individual and collective altruism could step in to fill the increasingly large gaps created within the safety net by the programme of austerity.  

When things are tough, we can seek comfort in finding someone to blame, even more so I expect if one voted for the party inflicting the pain. There was increasingly loud group of voices suggesting our problem was not austerity measures but immigrants and migrants, and having our hands tied by EU bureaucracy. Nigel Farage who seemed to be more a caricature than a politician was the poster boy for this groundswell and his growing popularity with the Right of the Conservative party was unsettling for Cameron and his chance of re-election in 2015.

Cameron took a gamble with the countries future, promising a referendum on leaving the EU if he were re-elected in the hope this would stem the flow of voters that he might otherwise lose to Farage’s still marginal party UKIP. One might say it was a desperate attempt by Cameron to cling on to power at all costs. His gamble paid off for him, in the short term at least, winning the 2015 election with a majority despite the polls predicting another hung parliament. For the country, this meant we now had the prospect of a referendum on remaining in the EU (our biggest trading partner), the referendum and more importantly, its consequences.

The campaign to leave the EU was dogged by accusations of misinformation and overstating the benefits to the UK of withdrawing from the Union but nonetheless, in 2016 Britain voted to leave the EU, albeit by the narrowest of margins. Cameron resigned out of shame as he like many of us hadn’t expected the “leavers” to win and left it to his successor to deal with. Theresa May who was also a “remainer” was selected by her party to take the reins and instigate what became known as BREXIT. In June 2017 and wanting to win the public mandate (or perhaps should she lose, pass on the poisoned challis she’d inherited) May took the gamble of calling a premature election. With public opinion still divided over BREXIT and May suffering like Gordon Brown from sufficient charisma to galvanise the public vote, the snap election resulted in another hung parliament. This time relying on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist’s Party to prop them up, the Conservatives managed to retain power.

The fallout from BREXIT was far-reaching, extending beyond the political sphere into the everyday lives of ordinary people. The end of free movement between the UK and the EU not only impacted industries reliant on migrant labour but also altered the cultural fabric of the country. For decades, the UK had been a hub for European talent, with artists, academics, and professionals contributing to a vibrant, cosmopolitan society. The new immigration rules, however, created barriers for those who once saw the UK as a land of opportunity. This shift has been particularly felt in universities, where EU students now face higher tuition fees and stricter visa requirements, leading to a decline in applications and a narrowing of the cultural exchange that once enriched British campuses.

The BREXIT process also exposed deep regional divides within the UK itself. While England and Wales voted to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland largely voted to remain. This reignited debates about Scottish independence and the future of the Union, leading to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party government pushing for a second independence referendum. In Northern Ireland, the BREXIT deal’s Northern Ireland Protocol has created tensions, with unionists feeling alienated by the de facto trade border in the Irish Sea. The question of what it means to be "British" has never been more contested, as the UK grappled with its identity both at home and on the global stage.

During these years we had also seen the proliferation of smartphones and social media and despite the premise that having an internet computer in one’s pocket and that social media platforms helped people to connect more easily, it could also be argued that in fact these technologies facilitated mostly remote communication, undermining in-person human social contact further atomising society and isolating individuals. It became normal to see groups of people, each with their heads down staring at the screens of their smartphones in silence, even two halves of a couple seated in a restaurant and waiting to be served. Of course, these “free” social media applications were also able to collect huge amounts of data on users and in turn monetise their platforms and users by selling the promise of targeted advertising with granular accuracy only previously dreamt of by marketeers.

With the power of technology to deliver individually targeted messages to many millions of people instantaneously, it didn’t take long for those tasked with political campaigning and persuasion to capitalise. The most notorious example of this was Cambridge Analytica scandal where the British consulting firm employed nefarious means to harvest and repurpose user data to favour the election of Donald Trump to position of US President in 2016. Similarly, political campaigning had expanded beyond traditional media in the UK where targeted social media messaging was likely an influence on the BREXIT referendum and has in the 2020’s become normalised and just another tool in the party-political propaganda toolbox.

Another significant cultural development that was a consequence of the proliferation of smartphones and social media platforms during this period was the rise of the “influencer”. With the ability to capture high quality video on a smartphone it was possible to create audio-visual content with minimal further investment. Combined with the ease of upload and distribution via platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and later TikTok, people could establish a following from a global audience and monetise the content made for which ever interest group they were targeting. Like the “stars” made by reality TV these influencers take on celebrity status in their online sphere with their persona becoming a brand and a commodity.

Platforms like Instagram and TikTok also turned self-presentation into a performance, where every post, story, and reel could be carefully curated to project an idealized version of life. This constant pressure to perform gave rise to a new kind of anxiety, particularly among younger generations, who began to measure their worth against the highlight reels of others. The phenomenon of "doomscrolling" - endlessly consuming negative news and content - further exacerbated this, creating a cycle of stress and disconnection in a world that had become more connected than ever.

While the democratization of content creation allowed marginalized voices to find platforms and audiences they might never have reached through traditional media, Movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter gained momentum through social media, demonstrating its power to drive social change. Yet, this same democratization has also enabled the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, with algorithms designed to maximize engagement often prioritizing sensationalism over truth. With the tentacles of technology reaching into every corner of our lives, the last barriers between the personal and the markets were dissolving.

Although online TV streaming services began in the UK with the BBC’s own iPlayer and commercial operators such as Netflix in around 2007, it was the 2010’s when this mode of watching TV and Films really began to consolidate. With the rollout of a fibre optic network replacing the old copper telephone lines, higher speed internet for more people and an increasing number of on-demand media streaming services the way we consume visual media was changed permanently. The sheer volume of content available created a paradox of choice. With so many options at our fingertips, it could feel overwhelming to decide what to watch, leading to a phenomenon known as "analysis paralysis." At the same time, the algorithms that recommend content could trap us in echo chambers, limiting our exposure to diverse perspectives. While streaming undoubtedly expanded our access to stories from around the world, it also made it easier to retreat into familiar narratives, reinforcing our existing beliefs rather than challenging them.

Despite the disruption caused by streaming broadcast TV is still hung on in there, but it seems that apart from soap opera staples and primetime news for the slower to adopt viewers, it had to increasingly rely on serialised and sensationalised programming to attract audiences. The most popular of these were often of the contrived reality format too, whether it is Strictly Come Dancing, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, Traitors, and the afore-mentioned Love Island. All these shows rely on the competition/elimination/crowning-a-winner format, one perfect for a late-stage capitalist society where cream rises to the top and the bettered fall by the wayside. And with viewers able to curate their own personal diet of content and binge whole streamed series in a night, it is such broadcast serialised programming that still provided the “watercooler moments”. Moments where people come together to share, relate, disagree or bond over the same content watched at the same time albeit separately.

Likewise, our online news feeds began being individually curated for us now, both by algorithm and self-selection with seemingly endless sources of “news” and information. In an ever more crowded and always on and online media sphere, it seems that content and voices had to get ever bigger, brasher, and louder, or more extreme to capture attention. Twitter, now Elon Musk’s X short form public messaging platform has become notorious for public rows, insults and “Trolling” where people expressing their views are viciously attacked and demeaned by others with different opinions.

It was in this increasingly individualised and atomised environment of technology and media that the term “Woke” took over where “Politically Correct” had left off and Identity Politics and Culture Wars began to dominate so much of our public discourse. Rational debate and the ability to agree to disagree seemed to leave the building and with social media algorithms designed to prioritise the inflammatory, feelings prioritised over thought. Of course, the tendency of these platforms to provide bite-sized billets and often without context only fuelled the fire. Subsequently the cultural environment was one that sought to define us by our individual differences rather than emphasize our humane commonalities. It may sound conspiratorial but if governments and the big corporations which own and run the world wanted to distract us with some sleight of hand, wanted to divide us so as to conquer, they could do worse than utilise such tactics.

Meanwhile on a personal level my journey through the ranks in the world of sales and marketing continued. Having been headhunted and relocated from East Anglia to the Peak District for work in Manchester, my day-to-day life had changed drastically too. Although I enjoyed many elements of my work creating and overseeing promotional experiential products, forming marketing partnerships with national brands, and defining aspects of our customer communications, it was what I had to do to support my family rather than what I wanted to be doing. The hardest thing was when my wife returned to work, now as a part-time consult solicitor, and we had to move once more to balance her commute time with nursery and school schedules which meant my commute went from just under an hour to nearly two hours.

But it wasn’t so much the long drive I had that was hardest, but the further reduction in contact time with my two amazing daughters with whom I had always been close. Nonetheless, it was what I had to do to play my part and if it wasn’t for the business I worked for being sold and then merged with our biggest competitor, who knows how long I would have remained there. However, despite hanging on longer than many being made redundant around me, like a general amongst swathes of slaughtered infantry, I too was eventually rationalised out of a job in 2015.

We were fortunate again that with my wife’s earning potential she was able to increase her hours and keep us afloat while I sought employment. But with several years out of the job market, I was not prepared for what a thankless task this would be. With my incoherent CV that ranged across retail management, the building trade, running a childcare facility, marketing (to name only a few), and of course arts education, I didn’t appear to be well placed for the sort of senior roles I was applying for that were like the one I’d just left. After many tens of applications with either only no response at all or rejections it occurred to me that I might do well not to rely on the whims of an employer to guarantee my livelihood.

I had a 1st Class Honours degree and a master’s in photography, some experience and lessons learned from being self-employed and working in commercial studios before. I had some redundancy money and new skills in marketing learned and developed over the past five years. F**k it, I thought, I’ll set myself up as a wedding photographer. While I knew it would take time to build a business that was profitable, this route would mean I could also take on more of the childcare and domestic duties to facilitate my wife’s increased hours. I had managed to secure and start a part-time job in a pub, but when the school holidays kicked in it didn’t make sense to continue as childcare cost more per hour than I was earning.

Employing what I had learned about marketing from previous commercial roles I approached other local suppliers to the wedding industry to form mutually beneficial partnerships and used targeted social media content to reach potential customers nationally also. Although I was still a long way from having a successful business within the first six months, I had secured commissions to shoot a few weddings including two at prestigious and novel venues.

One was for a Parliamentary Researcher and her partner. A perk of her job was to be able to book the remarkable chapel of St Mary Underwood beneath the Palace of Westminster for the ceremony, and to use the Palace of Westminster as a venue for further shots. The novel photo opportunities didn’t start and end there though, because the groom was of Chinese heritage, so the wedding began with traditional dress and a tea ceremony, then after the wedding itself at Westminster Palace, I followed the trendy young couple and their friends, shooting the wedding party on the underground as we made our way to the reception venue which was in a converted industrial unit under the railway arches in Shoreditch.

The other rather unique wedding I secured to shoot was for another London couple who had chosen to tie the knot during the second annual Festival of Love which was held at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank of the Thames and see groups of around ten couples at time get married on the stage in front of an audience of thousands! The festival was set up to celebrate the legalisation of same-sex marriages and it felt like a genuine privilege to see couples of men and women, men and men, and women and women commit to live in love with each other on the same day at the same venue. While The Royal Festival Hall itself was an amazing venue to shoot a wedding at, I also made sure to take advantage of the wider location, using the adjacent graffiti-covered skate park and slow shutter speeds combined with flash to create some striking and memorable portraits of the couple that were in keeping with their quirky style.

There were other, more traditional wedding commissions in Derbyshire - where we were living at the time - as well as those further afield and I enjoyed shooting every single one of them, despite the demanding long days (typically 14 hours) and the many days in advance spent in preparation. And although the two weddings described above are perhaps the most noteworthy to relay here, equally important to me were the likes of one I shot for the middle aged couple who ran the local independent Jewellers I had partnered with for marketing, and then subsequently the booking I got from the makeup artist to that bride to shoot her own wedding – not only had she seen the style of images I made, but she had also seen me at work first hand. I had always felt that my personality and approach were crucial to this work, and I saw the commission as confirmation of this in a role where unlike many other jobs I’d had, one doesn’t tend to get the gratification of repeat customers.

My wife had been missing her network of friends in the area 150 miles south that we had relocated from a few years previously. And although she was earning good money at the firm she was working with, it wasn’t a permanent job so less secure than it could be. I was no longer tied to the Manchester area for work so when she suggested we look to return to where she was more comfortable, if she could find the right job it made sense to support her. I hadn’t realised at this point that she was probably already beginning to resent the shift in our dynamic or that perhaps she hoped I would find it easier to find well-paid full-time employment once we’d returned. Within the year she had two offers to choose from, both permanent senior positions with salaries I could probably only dream of earning, and so it was that we were set to return south in February 2016.

Whether it was wilful ignorance on my part I’m not sure but as I said, I hadn’t realised this was the beginning of the end and having uprooted and relocated once more, the marriage was over a little after a year later. The tension between us caused by such an uneven dynamic seemed not to be sustainable and although I had tried to address the situation, it was in fact no easier to find work down south than it had been previously. Living apart from my children was impossible for me to reconcile and led to my making a couple of attempts to take my own life, but the separation had been so acrimonious their estrangement from me was something I had to accept. I seemed to be accumulating a lifetime of regrets in the space of a year and with so much of my identity having been rooted in my being a father, it really felt that the ground hand dissolved beneath my feet. It was this sense of being dislocated from meaning and lost that inspired me to make the Reorientation series of images during 2017-18.

I may be more fortunate than I deserve, but I met and began a relationship with another amazing woman in 2018. Bright, funny and kind with a sense for style and design that was deeply attractive. As a journalist and producer for the BBC for over 15 years the conversation was always interesting, and she was as much a friend to me as a lover. She was also an excellent sounding board for my artwork and while none of my other images were made without input from others or without external influence, this person’s insights while I was making the Man-Made series in 2018-19 where more significant to the outcome of that work than that of others on prior pieces. Photographing oneself and ensuring the technical elements are correct is one challenge, but is nothing compared to ensuring the right emotions are conveyed. Without her input I don’t know if I could have achieved this. So, credit where credit is due, and even though that relationship didn’t last either, it’s impact on my work and life was indelible.

And that is the story so far. I have reader, tried not to spoon feed you and explain too much of what you should take away, if anything from the images themselves. But hopefully I have shed some light on to the personal, social and cultural factors I was trying to process in making the work. Stay tuned for more.’

“disturbing yet stunning parody of society’s objectification of gender”
— Debbi Allen, Editor Digital Photography Magazine