In my travels around Italy in my early twenties, a friend gifted me a camera to help me relay my visual narrative as I couldn’t speak the language at the time. Bitten by the photography bug, I enrolled on the Photography HND course at Bradford College in 2003, and thus my journey as a photographer began. Years later, when I was hired by a commercial franchise, I started to hone my studio photography practice and this led me to set up my own commercial studio in 2012, in Shipley, West Yorkshire, which I operated for over two years. I continued to develop my studio portraiture archive and also took on 'Wedding' and 'Events' commissions which I still occasionally offer if I’m asked nicely. :-p
In 2015, I became interested in a more documentary style of photography and spent a year volunteering for the UK wide 'The Real Junk Food Project'network of pay-as-you-feel cafes,both in the kitchens and behind the lens. This culminated in my very first solo exhibition in Saltaire and an extended launch at the Saltaire Arts Trail in 2016.
Elated by this, I then collaborated with the 'Butterfly Project', which resulted in a second exhibition at Kala Sangam in Bradford in 2016 and then the Regeneration of Bradford City Centre, which featured on the Big Screen Bradford in 2017.
2018 saw the completion of my year long Arts Council England funded 'Forty' project, inspired by me turning forty years old in 2018. I wanted to explore what turning forty meant to forty of us individuals. I decided to venture back into the studio (set up in my then basement flat kitchen!) and thus began the process of sensitive dialogue with the participants to capture their ‘individualistic truths’ for my bespoke ‘shychetype’ conceptual portrait series. The first half of this exhibition opened the 2018 Saltaire Festival, and the final collection launched at the Holding Space, Saltaire in February 2019 in the lead up to the Saltaire Arts Trail 2019.
In 2019, I documented my second Arts Council England funded project ‘Body Talk’. This launched in January 2020 at Kala Sangam. Keen to promote a body positive dialogue for women through photography, it was my first time collaborating with a local poet to enhance the work. Check out the gallery here.
Speared on by my support for ‘Black Lives Matter’, succeeding the ‘Times Up’ and ‘Me Too’ movements, during the pandemic I decided I wanted to pursue a more socially engaged practice. I was funded by ACE again to deliver participatory photography workshops to refugees and asylum seekers from a community centre in inner city Bradford, where they were afforded the agency to relay their own authentic narratives on their doorsteps, using their smarrtphones. For this ‘Local Focal’ project, they shot all the photos and a digital exhibition and launch was live-streamed during Refugee Week 2021. I was happy to encompass the role of teacher/facilitator for the first time, rather than photographer.
During this time, I was awarded ACE funding for the R&D phase for ‘Women in Uniform’ - a photo series celebrating UK women of colour who work in industries where we’re traditionally under-represented.In an effort to dismantle preconceived stereotypes and systemic, institutionalised racism and misogyny, I wanted to build a strong subject dialogue and discuss the complex interplay between women of colour and cultural sensitivities by inviting them to discuss the sub-text and role of their uniform and what/how it represented them individually. This process of thorough outreach work to find the right project partners and exhibition venue, amongst deep, sensitive engagement, culminated in a three year project which had a successful exhibition run at Haworth Art Gallery in 2023 and Cartwright Hall in 2024. It is my biggest and proudest achievement to date.
But I still managed to deliver another participatory photography ACE funded project in between! In 2023, ‘Blooming Likeness’ was a tribute to the young people living in the inner city areas of Bradford where I grew up. I collaborated with two community hubs, Girlington and Millside Centres, to deliver workshops in a similar vein to ‘Local Focal’ where the young people used their smartphones to relay their visual narratives on their own doorsteps. It was beautiful and their exhibition launched at Girlington Centre on Yorkshire Day 2023 where it is still housed to this day.
