My practice is rooted in photography and an interest in place, archives, memory and traces of lived experience. I often begin with photographs, postcards, objects or fragments of testimony, following what happens when they enter a new context. I work through photography, research, writing, collaboration and publishing, often using the artist book as a way of bringing images, text and ideas together.
I have worked as a book designer for more than thirty years, collaborating with artists, galleries and independent publishers since moving to Manchester in the early 1990s. The visual and material language of the book has deeply informed my approach to image-making, sequencing and narrative. In 2013 I began to focus more fully on developing my own artistic practice, which has since expanded to include photography, video, text and public art.
Research and engagement are central to my work. I have worked with institutional and personal archives, but also with communities, where photographs, memories and stories can become part of a shared and sometimes changing record. I am interested in what happens when material is returned to, recontextualised or seen differently. The unexpected detail, the overlooked fragment and the associative connection often become ways into understanding place and history.
Collaboration is an important part of this. I value the exchange that happens when other people bring their knowledge, memories and perspectives into a project, and recognise that the work can change through those encounters.
My photographic practice is attentive to what Georges Perec called the ‘infra-ordinary’: the everyday details that might otherwise go unnoticed. This has led me towards a quieter way of looking at landscape and place, and towards questions about what remains, what is remembered and what can return.
Recent projects include Photographs from Another Place, developed from a collection of rediscovered 1920s glass negatives; Nothing Remained Unchanged but the Clouds, developed from German First World War postcards and photographs of Grandpré in the French Ardennes; and Zwischenstädten: Pauseland, a collaborative project with Linus Groesel developed through Quarantine’s Would Like to Meet programme.
In 2023, I received an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant to explore new visual and collaborative strategies through La Vojo Returne. This followed previous ACE Project Grant support for Photographs from Another Place. These opportunities have been important in allowing me to develop the research, collaboration and experimentation that underpin my practice.
I am currently cataloguing and responding to a collection of approximately 600 35mm slides made by an amateur photographer during the 1970s and 1980s. The extent of the original archive is unknown. I am also revisiting a glass negative gifted to me during Photographs from Another Place, which remained in my archive for ten years before becoming the starting point for new work.
Selected exhibitions, commissions and projects:
Nichts blieb unverändert außer den wolken (Nothing Remained Unchanged but the Clouds) – Waisenhausdamm 8, Braunschweig, Germany, 4–13 May 2026.
Exhibition developed from my ongoing work around Grandpré in the French Ardennes, shown in collaboration with artist Jeffrey Knopf and in conjunction with Technische Universität Braunschweig. The project explores how archival photographs can shift through collage, digital processes, collaboration and return.
Would Like to Meet – Quarantine, October–December 2025.
Selected for this cross-border, intergenerational artist exchange between Chemnitz and Manchester. I worked with German artist Linus Groesel through an intentionally open-ended period of conversation, experimentation and shared experience. Our temporary studio presentation, Zwischenstädten: Pauseland, was shown at Museum Gunzenhauser, Chemnitz, as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture programme.
Tout avait changé sauf les nuages (Nothing Remained Unchanged but the Clouds) – Grandpré and the Abbey of Notre Dame de Chéhéry, Ardennes, France, September 2025; toured to Braunschweig, Germany, May 2026.
An ongoing photographic project developed from a collection of German First World War postcards and photographs of Grandpré. The work considers how archival images can become a way of approaching a place that cannot be fully recovered. An artist book of the same title accompanies the project.
Photographs from Another Place – The Hostry, Norwich Cathedral, 3–26 November 2022; Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, December 2019–February 2020.
A major exhibition and publication resulting from a long-term photographic project based around a collection of rediscovered 1920s glass negatives purchased on eBay. The project developed through photography, archival research, collaboration and exchanges with people connected to the places depicted.
Memory and Identity – Cista Arts, London, December 2022.
Online group exhibition featuring two works from the development of La Vojo Returne, my ongoing project around archival images, memory and place.
Pass! Shoot!! Goal!!! – Touchstones Rochdale, May 2022.
A commission developed with artist Neville Gabie following six months of community engagement around Gracie Fields and the first commercially written song about football. The project explored the relationship between football, popular culture and local memory.
#I_Am_Clarion – Mid Pennine Arts, September 2021.
A commission exploring socialism, identity and the communal bonds of the Clarion cycling movement, developed as part of Mid Pennine Arts’ Pendle Radicals programme.
Cambridge Rules 1848 – Cambridge City Council, 2020.
A major public art commission developed with Neville Gabie to commemorate Parker’s Piece as the birthplace of the 1848 Cambridge Rules. The project combined a permanent public artwork with a digital archive and an international cultural exchange involving five locations, including Brazil’s Maracanã Stadium.
Breaking Ground – Bradford Park Avenue, 2017.
An artist residency and publication developed around the abandoned Bradford Park Avenue football ground. I designed the resulting artist book, which became the first crowd-funded artist book to be shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. I also worked with Neville Gabie on Ex(s)ports, a European arts commission developed with KAA Gent Ladies in Belgium.
Citizen Manchester – Manchester Central Library and Manchester Art Gallery, 2014.
A two-year artist residency with Dan Dubowitz during the refurbishment of Manchester Central Library. Working with the library’s archives and the changing building, we developed a series of interventions that culminated in exhibitions at both institutions. The project was commissioned by Manchester City Council and Laing O’Rourke, with an accompanying Manchester University Press publication designed by me.