Umbra Sumus
Here’s a recent tearsheet – a cover and two stories – from the Independent on Sunday Magazine. Firstly, a piece on Fergus Drennan, (also known a s Fergus the Forager who I’ve written about and photographed before) and a piece on Karims restaurant in Old Delhi.
This month marks the centenary of Bollywood – the garish, larger-than-life dream factory that enraptures Indian audiences worldwide. Five years ago I was commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine to photograph Ronnie Screwvalla, the millionaire film producer and founder of the UTV group over a couple of days in Mumbai. Screwvalla proved charming if extraordinarily busy. I photographed him at home and at his studios but realising that he would make a good potential cover, pursuaded his nervous PR staff (they’re always nervous aren’t they?) to let me have twenty minutes with him at a Mumbai beach near where he grew up. Originally, I’d wanted him walking along the beach but it soon became clear that that wasn’t going to happen. I arrived early and had my star-struck driver hold a single strobe as Screwvalla emerged from his limo. The picture lasted no more than five minutes before he had to leave. It never made the cover but I’ve always liked it.
Here’s a recent tearsheet from the German Magazine Brand Eins Neuland. They commissioned me to interview three former alumni of Jacobs University for a special edition on the city of Bremen. I travelled to Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) and Bangladesh (Dhaka) to write the story and made a brief city reportage as well as the portraits.
Very saddened to read that the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula is now the most violent place on Earth as reported in today’s Guardian.
I remember shooting a small story there about young people trying to leave the gangs in 2001.
Here are a couple of the images that I made …
Following yesterday’s entry with the tearsheet from the Monocle assignment, I thought I’d show some images that I was pleased with but didn’t make the final edit.
Funnily enough, I’d just shot and written another piece about French involvement in India… hundreds of miles away – a strange coïncidence. More on that when it’s published later in the year…
Here’s a spread from this month’s Monocle Magazine of a story I shot for them a few weeks ago in Pondicherry, the former French territory in southern India. I’ll post a couple of my favourite images from the set in a day or two.
Last week I was on assignment for a magazine in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu photographing the French influence on the place.
As you can see, my presence didn’t go unnoticed… The local newspaper decided that me laying on the floor to get a better angle on a military band was front page news… as was the arrest of the poor chap who, slightly worse for wear on the local hooch, chose that moment to have a little dance in front of me and then squared up to the band leader – presumably for not playing his favourite tune…
In any case, I made a frame and clearly gave the local newsroom a laugh.
