I live in London, I’m a photographer and I’m a huge animal lover. And yet I eat meat, I wear leather shoes and I’ve never gone on an anti-vivisection march.
If someone stopped me in a street and asked that truly awful question:
‘Hi stranger, here is a truly awful question: if a bus was about to hit you, what would you really like to have done with your life?’
(at this point I imagine a bus careering off the road and hitting HIM). I would reply by saying I would have liked to have done more to help animals. And then… I would walk away sheepishly – excuse the pun – embarrassed at the naivety of what I had just said (‘helping animals’? That’s what six year olds write on their to-do lists next to ‘becoming an astronaut’ and ‘dating Victoria Knowles from class 8b’) and I would hide the entire roast chicken that I was eating inside my leather jacket before crossing the street – carefully avoiding buses.
You see, I want to resolve that contradiction inside me – the contradiction between caring deeply about something and doing NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO HELP. I want to ask:
HOW MANY ANIMALS CAN ONE (CRAP) MAN SAVE IN 365 DAYS??
If you want to follow me you can do so by clicking the facebook and twitter links on the top.
Some more random things about me if you really care:
Here is a picture of my dog, moose:
Here are some insignificant details:
- I’m 6’4″
- Thinning on top (but you won’t see the top of my head unless you are 6’5″ …or you kick me in the balls)
- Widening on the waist
- Favourite colour: GREY
- Favourite word: GREY.
- Favourite food: bacon/chicken/POTATO
- Least favourite fact: I’ve been on anti-depressants for 10+ years.
I can’t come off the little buggers – I’ve tried many times and spiralled down into myself. And so I’m terrified of this project, not just because its full of uncertaintity and zero promise of a earning a living but because I’m a big plastic bucket of anxiety. It sloshes around inside me and heading into a big dark unknown reminds me a little too much of those dark unknowns inside me.
Why do I tell you this? For sympathy? For drama?
No. Rather because the nature of my mood -and my own frailty – will inevitably be part of the story. I can’t separate out my need to help animals from my need to help myself. It’s not hard to see that this exercise is as much about helping animals as it is about testing a very human resolve – if I fail, if I slip, if I sink into uncertainty, then I will carry on writing and telling that story, as much as I can.
Oh, and here is some of my photography – you might see traces of this darkness in my work, but also some humour too. I will take a good camera with me whereever I go.
Some portraits:
And here are some pictures from my series ‘Dogs in cars’ which is not so much about dogs but about those horrible feelings of alone-ness and anxiety I guess we all have sometimes…(for a forthcoming book – out in October 2012)