I have this love affair with old analogue things.
Tape decks and record players
and VHS machines and film projectors.
I think it reminds me of a past that was a lot more romantic.
You’d take your time to enjoy what you were doing...
to put on a record, sit back and have a cup of tea.
Me being ADHD and always working on five things at once,
I feel like sometimes I’ll burn out
just from being in too much of a hurry in life.
Analogue, in a way, somehow calms me down a little.
It’s a good way of making my ADHD life a little slower.
If we go back to the beginning,
I was in the boarding school for most of my life
and didn’t want to be there.
I was a creative. And it wasn’t very easy to be a creative
when everything was a study subject.
So I never really did very well at school.
They never distinguished any problems with you in those days.
They didn’t tell you there were things like dyslexia or ADHD.
You were just one of those people that
couldn’t keep up with the rest of the kids.
I felt a little on the back foot and I felt stupid.
I felt that I was not able to compete or compare to others.
It’s a strange thing to say, but this (camera)
has carried me through my life, every day.
Since I was 13 or 14, I’ve had a camera.
And it’s always been my best friend.
I was very shy at school.
Because I was a little different to everybody else, I kept to myself.
And the camera became like a shield against my shyness.
I could hide behind this device.
If I have this up in front of me, there’s a wall between me
and whatever I’m feeling shy about.
Protecting yourself from others that you think might not accept you.
You’re hiding from your own feeling of
not being able to be as good as what
you think people thought you should be.
When I left boarding school and I ended up in art school
I realised that there are many other misfit, outcast people out there
that can get away with being an original and being different.
And not being snuffed at or looked at as being strange or different.
It was actually celebrated.
And I found a community of people I could resonate with.
And that’s when I first realised that
there is something out there for me where I can actually shine.
It gave me the confidence to eventually become
somebody that believed in themselves as being a creative.
I’ve photographed most famous people...
Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, U2.
And I realise they’re all just like me.
Magazines and advertising have put people on pedestals.
And these people are just like us.
They have issues, they have their own problems...
some of them a lot more than we have.
We all fight the same battle.
We’re all insecure within ourselves inside.
And we all doubt ourselves.
The quicker you can build up the confidence in yourself,
that you are an individual
and you have as much potential as anybody else on this planet.
Just be confident in what you do and believe in yourself.
Not to worry what other people think.
Indigenous Red Indians and some other cultures
have always thought that photography steals your soul.
And I think, doing wet plate photography, I realised that in a way.
You’re capturing 30 seconds of somebody sitting really still.
And you can’t really put on a facade.
You can’t smile and keep it authentic for 30 seconds.
You have to go into yourself, and the real person comes out.
You look into their soul... the true sense of who you are.
What’s important in life isn’t about what you achieve out there.
It’s what you achieve inside.
Look after this old soul of yours and invest in it.
Because it’s the one that’s going to keep you going
when everything else around you falls flat.
You make and you lose money.
But the one thing people can’t take away from you
is a richness for learning and experiencing and growing inside.
What makes you feel happy in your heart?
What makes you feel happy inside you?
The more that you can put into your heart of happiness
and your heart of sharing and your heart of giving
and being happy and positive.
I think that, to me, represents my soul.
Live who you are to the full because it’s your life
and you’re the hero in your own life.
So it’s your reality you’re creating... create a good one.