Adam Patterson, 'Another Lost Child'


Adam Patterson's project 'Another Lost Child' is a powerful document of the South London gang scene. His work questions the media hype surrounding the issue and pulls into debate whether this sensationalised coverage is simply fuelling the matter rather than leading to preventions or resolutions.

His images are startlingly honest that provide insight into the lives of these youths, offering them a voice. Sensitively immersed in the subject matter, Adam captures the day to day banalities behind the publicised drama, everyday events, quiet moments, family events, humanising his subjects that have become an icon of public fear.

I spoke to Adam about his experience of the project..

Tell me about how you began the project….

This project began off the back of the media coverage I was seeing on gun and knife crime. I felt that, whereas newspapers have a duty to report the truth, they were pushing far past the basic facts, and in my mind, spreading fear through sensationalist headlines and one-sided opinion.
I knew I wanted to offer a different side to this story, one I knew exists in all human beings. It took me six months to find the right angle of approach.

It seems like a vulnerable position to put yourself in, how did the subjects initially react to your camera?

This project was always about giving voice to the people I was covering. As such we had continuous dialogue about representation, about what they saw in themselves. I felt this ruled out possibility of confusion, misunderstanding and possible unrest, which may have been a derivative of a less open approach.
The subjects seem very image conscious (exemplified in the image above, in which the act of going to the barbers looks both like a cathartic exercise and a social one)…

We all have a look for camera, you see it at high-end parties, at college dances and on the street. It comes from security and preserving a lifestyle that stands for much of what we know and understand. Initially this came across more towards the dark hooded stereotype, but with time, other moments began to surface, moments of humanity that were the backbone of my work.

Were they wary of how you would portray them?

Very much so. I was often questioned and I always offered explanation. These young people feel badly treated by the media and so once they realised I was operating with my own agenda, they felt relatively comfortable. I had a massive responsibility. Perception can be a dangerous thing; I continually questioned myself and my goals. I knew which photos could be lifted out of context and which ones were necessary – it is a very fine balance. Most importantly however, this project was never about my opinion of who these people are – I have no right to comment on a people that way, it is not my job. I offered some visuals, which I feel, are an accurate portrayal of what I have experienced, and then I got them to add their words in case I got anything wrong.

There’s a strong sense of bravado present in these men that gets slowly broken down as the project progresses, how do they feel about the work as a whole - have you shown the images to them?

They use my photos for their social networking pages, for mix-tapes, for applications to model agencies. If they don’t like something they tell me why, and I take that into consideration.

There are some very intimate images included in the series; was there any point at which you felt intrusive? Were they worried about how you would use the images?

If they didn’t want me to shoot they told me – but this rarely happened. If the images are intimate it is because they invited me into that situation, because they felt that view of them was had an important quality.

Are you worried about how people will perceive the work- the use of handwritten text that anchors the images is somewhat child-like and naive, do you feel you’re softening the characters too much - or do you feel there was a sense of naivety within these gangs, or a sense that they are playing up to ‘roles’?

All the text was written by the people themselves. As I said before, it is not what I am saying or doing, but what they are offering me. It is their voice, at times people may see it as naive, but they should ask themselves how rounded they were at 16 or 17 years old. Some of these kids do bad things, terrible things – but in an era of rolling news, we are fully aware of these developments. The reality I have been trying to show is that they also inhabit emotional structures just like ours - they miss their fathers, they cry, they go with their mothers to church. I don’t think this is too soft, but I think a majority public would just prefer to believe the media hype that these people are full of evil and in no way like themselves.

The edit of the images equates the project with a steady rhythm, and allows mini narratives to flow within the book. Was the project hard to edit (with such a sensitive subject, you must have been aware that pairing up certain images would lead to completely different readings)?

The project has been difficult to piece together, but also because I am still working on it. It’s always hard to pin a narrative down when you are still shooting. Characters change every day and I learn more and more. You try to do justice to all that give you time, but it’s challenging.


Adam made this work as part of his MA at the LCC. You can see the full project on his website.

by Leonidas Papazoglou via this edition of IZ magazine.

Got a couple of magazines which have caught my notice recently. IZ is published in Istanbul by Fotografevi and generally focuses on black and white documentary work, it's fairly traditional and beautifully printed. This month Vanessa Winship and George Georgiou are guest editing and the result is a really interesting cross section of portraits, of different times, places, styles and purposes (which includes some colour). I don't know how easy the magazine is to track down but most of the tearsheets are on Georges blog, along with further links to the photographers work, so I'll leave it at that.

Also via George's blog I found Deep Sleep magazine, which is a new online photography magazine based in London, and is taking submissions for their next issue, theme 'Aliens'. (No fee!...or payments either but it's a nice format to show work.)

Details of our new venture are now online! We have been working for many months on the idea of setting up an online service through which you can purchase exciting photography at an affordable price. After fine-tuning the concept, we spent many nights tearing our hair out over the name (as you can see we came back to the name we had in the first place) and going back and forth over how we wanted it to look. It's finally starting to come together though, go visit our holding page for more details and get in touch if you're interested in becoming involved!

After a couple of weeks of serious effort, my first multimedia piece for Panos is done! The great photography is by Abbie Trayler-Smith, who has an exhibition of the work at Host Gallery until the 4th April. It has been supported by the Still Human Still Here campaign, which aims to end the governments deliberate policy of destitution of refused asylum seekers. One of the guys featured in the piece (Alain) came to talk at the open on Wednesday and it really brought home to me the reality of the way he and others have been forced to live. It's truly disgusting and I hope the piece conveys some of this. There's more info at the show so do come and have a look.


Still Human Still Here; Refused asylum seekers in the UK. from Anna Stevens on Vimeo.

Hin Chua, After the Fall

The relationship between man and nature is a precarious balance, as Hin Chua investigates in his series, ‘After the Fall’. His images are ones of careful observation, retaining a somewhat anonymous distance from his subjects.
Hin tells me that his approach is, ‘to pick a spot on a map that could be considered 'the middle of nowhere', get there and walk around for several hours, photographing what I find’. This has lead him to shoot the project in locations throughout the world (USA, Australia, UK, China & Japan, a lot of Europe), yet he has found the most of the sites ‘completely interchangeable.’ His work points out that regardless of culture or landscape, the dialogue between man and nature is fairly ubiquitous. Glaring industrial structures impose on pastoral scenes, yet there appears to be a reciprocal reaction taking place, in which the man made imitates the natural and the natural imitates the man made. The two elements surprisingly seem to have a seamless bond as Hin examines the complexity of this ever-transforming relationship. I chatted to Hin about this work:

How did you begin 'After the Fall'?

To say the least, it was an organic process. My first exposure to photography was through the street work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gary Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz. This indoctrinated in me a working process that involved a great deal of walking, observation and patience.

I recall a conversation with a friend concerning projects and the making of work: "The way I see it, there are essentially two kinds of photographers, the creators and the hunters. And you Hin, are a hunter". It's fair to say that I hunted for a while without quite knowing what I was looking for. I began this project with nothing more than a conscious desire to get out into the world and 'do something'. As a result, I spent a few months wandering, searching for inspiration while photographing anything that caught my eye.

Every so often, I'd get my film developed, scan it painstakingly and then look over the work, trying to make sense of everything. Initially, this proved to be an extremely frustrating process: I remember a particularly depressing Boxing Day that involved much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The pictures were thematically incoherent and almost pointless. Why was I wasting so much doing this?

It was only after a few such episodes that the broadest of brush strokes emerged to reveal themselves to me. As a more consistent manner of seeing slowly developed, certain themes started to repeat themselves in the negatives. Equally importantly, I began to have an inkling as to the places I would have to visit to make the images that most resonated with me.

I was finally ready to begin working.

Your photographs look like they follow an intuitive path, how do you find your images? Are they a result of visiting specific locations (and how do you decide on these locations?)?

The short answer is, with a great deal of hard work and exploring. I always recall the line Samuel L. Jackson's character utters in 'Pulp Fiction': "I'll walk the earth... meet people... get into adventures. Like Caine from 'Kung Fu'". At a certain level that's my approach and while I'll admit to experiencing fewer all-action brawls than Caine, I would at least hope that my pictures are better than his.

And just like him, I prefer my adventures to be on foot. While less ground is covered, it's at a slower pace that provides a better opportunity to explore the environment and absorb its subtleties. To take a more considered, meditative approach, with the often considerable gaps of photographic inaction almost serving as foreplay for the next encounter.

In terms of locations, I focus on areas on the boundaries of the urban and rural, the battle zones between man and nature, where one spills across into the other with unpredictable results. Because of my method of working, I've needed to become proficient in researching potential regions of interest from maps or Google Earth. From the terrain, zoning structure and the distribution of buildings and other man-made artifacts, I can often identify the most promising areas relatively easily. Having travelled extensively to make work for this project, I've also needed to be aware of cultural differences that may affect these 'readings': the eastern United States can be very different from southern Spain, northern Taiwan or western Australia.

Once you're on the ground though, everything is really in the hands of the photographic gods. You have no real idea what to expect, and my initial reaction is often one of anger, frustration and the strong desire to turn tail and head home ("How could you be so stupid to waste all this time and effort to get HERE?!?"). Ultimately though, I've come to realise that the clichéd sayings about the journey being more important than the destination are true: I'm out there, and that has to count for something.

There are times though when everything comes together and the payoff can be exhilarating. I recall literally walking out of an Andalucian town and then half a dozen miles into the surrounding wilderness. And there finally I found a setting that proved to be everything it promised when first viewed on a monitor in a dark room in London.

How long have you been working on 'After the Fall'?

I've actively worked on the project for about a year and a half. I have sub-consciously divided the project into six month blocks in terms of shooting, scanning, editing and review (what's currently on my web site is from the first six months). I've found that working in such cycles provides a good opportunity to regularly reassess my progress, trim down the work and identify future themes, locations and goals. Kind of like the Five Year Plans drawn up by the Communist Party for developing the Soviet economy, but hopefully with more ultimate success!

What first attracted you to investigating the relationship between the natural and the man made?

Because everybody else seemed to be doing it already? More seriously, I could try to explain that it's because it's a serious issue, and one that's becoming ever more important in this age of impending environmental catastrophe. But ultimately and truthfully, it's because I found the association so visually compelling.

It's a back-and-forth, give-and-take struggle that can't help but produce scenes of odd, perverse beauty, scenes compatible with my way of looking at the world, scenes that provoke an intensely strong personal reaction. Indeed there are occasions when it literally feels that a big alarm bell is going off in my head, all but forcing me to make an exposure. And perhaps it's precisely because something CAN produce such potent imagery and corresponding excitement that it becomes consequential, regardless of whatever other conceptual baggage could subsequently be attached to it.

Is retaining a distance from your subjects a conscious decision; so that you remain an anonymous observer?

I got my start in photography by shooting strangers candidly on the street, so blending into the background and remaining uninvolved has always been part of my photographic makeup: I've already preferred to leave crime scenes undisturbed.

With my photos for 'After the Fall', I've concentrated on backing off in order to make my human subjects smaller parts of the entire composition. I want them to appear almost props on a stage, with the individuals blending more seamlessly into the environment. With such a detached approach, I hope to better convey my own personal viewpoint, unencumbered by the influences of any third parties.

Some of the juxtapositions of different elements (for example a man lying face down in a great expanse of space outside a looming Tescos) give the images a twinge of the filmic and the surreal, do you deliberately search for moments that play with the idea of the cinematic?

While having a natural affinity for such scenarios, I don't feel I seek them out deliberately. What I will say is that I notice and take advantage of the opportunity when fortunate enough to stumble across these scenes in my travels. I've always wanted to make memorable images. That might be stating the obvious, but I want to make photos that remain lodged in people's heads long after they've been first viewed, work that can be returned to repeatedly.

Tod Papageorge once said "I think now that, in general—and this includes a lot of what I see in Chelsea even more than what I see from students at Yale—there's a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination." I want to discover these little miracles: images that are fortuitous, fleeting conjunctions of random disparate elements soon to dissipate. I was secretly pleased when someone remarked that one of my pictures reminded them of a Jeff Wall composition, except for the fact that it was real. At this point, I find the reality of an image, regardless of its interpretation, to be very important to me.

What do you shoot on?

I use a Mamiya 7 6x7 medium format camera. It's light and relatively compact, allowing me to work as quickly or as deliberately as I wish. Whilst I've often toyed with the idea of moving up in formats, I feel that such a transition, at least in this stage of my development, would probably neuter some of my strengths: chiefly the ability to work quickly and intuitively.

Thomas Haywood, Family

I met Thomas Haywood when I was working at Metro and he was studying at the Royal College. His new work explores the nature of family relationships, associations with place and ideas of belonging. The project follows routes through landscapes, both rural and suburban, as his family comes together for walks and quiet leisure time. Absorbed in their own spaces, the family is both operating as a unit and as individuals, as they share experiences they remain partially absent; absorbed in their own thoughts. The images are quiet reflections, moments that gently resonate with familiarity and trace the course of time as the family ages and drifts in and out of engagement.

Simon Carruthers, Cycles

Simon Carruthers' body of work, Cycles, is primarily concerned with the relentless consumerism of the western world. He investigates the nature of mass production by photographing “the infrastructure supporting the consumption of domestic goods, and the net results of our consumption”. There is a strong element of accelerated time in Carruther’s images, as the viewer sees the objects move from production to detritus on a gigantic scale, skipping the middle stage of ownership. He rather succinctly summarises the process:

“Every item that we own has an origin. All that surrounds us in our homes and places of work, or as we journey through a modern metropolis has been extracted from the natural world. The man-made world is a world that has been wholly created from the raw materials found on and just beneath the earth’s surface. As it is true that all these items have an origin, it is also true that the components of the synthetic world have a destiny – a final resting place – for when we no longer require them. Their presence in our company is often fleeting. Once it has been decided that they are no longer wanted or needed, manufactured goods are returned to the earth, as waste.”

The landscape is overtaken with a sea of tyres, or a mountain of crates, the remnants of short lived desires. The man-made products spill over concrete and grass, overwhelming as they form structures. The repetitious shapes create a sense of abstraction; the individual objects loose their meaning, illustrating the temporal and throwaway nature with which we currently regard possessions. These images are an apt alternative to the images that advertise the merchandise; glossy images of the singular product; shiny, new, individual and special. Carruthers’ photographs still retain an aesthetic appeal, his images sharp and vast, the duplicated shapes alluring in the way a modernist painting is. This illustrates the futile and superficial nature of consumerism and highlights the sickening nature of our waste.

(originally posted on metavisual)

I've got a bit distracted from things that I should be doing today and since it's Friday afternoon I've been trawling through internet ephemera and trivia. I've been a little addicted to Twin Peaks of late and after reaching the climax of the final episode, have found myself at a bit of a loss. So here's a little Lynch fix in the form of a cigarette ad:

Tobias Smith, 'Drax'

Young photographer Tobias Smith is sparking interest all over the shop right now, after having just finished his first solo show which was held at TenderPixel Gallery. Toby's work investigates Britain's industrial landscape, documenting power stations at night, exploring the alienating architecture of these structures. Through Toby's long exposures the stations become luminous apparitions appearing from the black of the night, questioning our relationship with these outlets that sit on the peripheries of our towns and cities,encouraging us to examine our fragile relationship between energy production, the environment and our ever increasing need for power. I interviewed Toby to find out more about this project and his working methods:

How did you begin this body of work?

I was on a long drive up North and took a back route across my home county of Lincolnshire. I always carry my gear in the boot of my car and passed Spalding power station. I instinctively walked around in the dark to find the best vantage point and exposed a few plates before continuing the drive home. I was fascinated by the first shots..

What sparked your interest in the aesthetics of power stations?

I think it was partly the existing aesthetic but also our relationship with them and their position in the oddest of landscapes that was the catalyst behind it. After the first drive back I noticed for the first time the row of pylons leading from the Power Station in the dark to the city. As I got closer to the city the black of the night sky took on characteristic orange glow of the 100's of street lamps lit by the power plant. When I got home I got boiled the kettle and flicked the lights on and off a few times, remembering the noise and the smell of the site, that was key turning point in the project.

Do you want these images to incite political or environmental interpretations? The use of night-time photography and long exposures gives a luminous presence to the industrial sites you photograph, emphasizing the power in these sites and the pollution and waste they excrete…

This is tricky and something I've debated with myself and others a lot recently.. The project would be so easy to label in either direction and especially could be easily used to criticise the buildings. However I'm hoping people can see past that and that my making the utilitarian structures look beautiful I can present what is an almost neutral stance. That's not because I'm neutral but want the audience to make up their own minds. My personal opinion is that the Power Stations are merely existing to fuel our need for domestic and industrial electricity. There's no point an audience throwing political eggs at Power Stations after enjoying a hot shower, an overfilled kettle to make their mochachino and leaving their plasma screens on standby all week. In the same contradictory way we live in a country that can protest against wind farms, coal and nuclear simultaneously.

This also leads to the power stations having an ominous feel, creeping out of the darkness of the foreground- was this a feeling that you wanted to evoke?

Definately but I think the adjectives are viewer specific. People from further North might swop ominous for proud, or creeping for standing tall. I think I wanted to have a play on what they evoked in two different ways. Firstly, aesthetically, as you say this massive contrast in foreground and the structure themselves. In many shots the foreground I kept darker so that the interesting details caught the viewer after the Power Station. The landscapes I found myself in were truly otherwordly and I wanted to illustrate this collision of landscape with the enormous man made structure. Secondly, and I think more important to me was the tricky dialogue between beauty and hatred. My favourite example is Drax. Drax is the most polluting building in the Country, so I made an enormous effort to create the most soft and pleasant of images. I often "mystery shop" peoples opinions or eavesdrop when I exhibit work and my favourite quote was: “Wow, that is beautiful, followed by, but yuck its a power station.”

How did you get Getty interested in your work? Was this through Perpignan?

It was a long road, and Getty was actually the painless conclusion to a very long project.. I was constantly torn between editing and showing the existing work and charging forward to shoot more.. I reshot many of the sites after the style of the project solidified, I wanted to keep the approach and style simple and consistent and my own so I kept the project completely off anybodies radar apart from friends in my studio who I trusted to edit with. This made sure that by the time I had 20 images I was happy with, I hadn't been influenced by anyone elses' opinion and the folio was a very distinctive and original style. It was no accident that I pooled all of my resources into this project as aesthetically and current affairs we're fusing. I also attended Rhubarb Rhubarb photography festival, with purely the Light After Dark folio. After 20 folio reviews this gave me an even more considered edit, and importantly the ordering of the work and the confidence and know who to show it to.

At Perpignan I was showing my folio to the fringe's of the industry and anyone else I could get feedback from, other Photographers, smaller magazines etc. The Getty queue is by far the longest and I was actually marched past the entire queue by a senior editor at Corbis. What was amazing was that before I opened the book, they had already heard of my work in the bar the night before, so we arranged a meeting in London for the following week.

How did you find the experience of Perpignan?

(Strong Espresso, exhibition, queue, talk, folio review, great feedback, horrible feedback, queue, queue, rejection, espresso, screening in the square, beers in the square, sambuca in the clubs) Repeat for 5 days until exhausted and folio dog eared in exchange for a bag of business cards. I went to Perpignan with a clear mission, I took 5 ironed shirts, a pack of new C-Types and made every minute count. Its primarily a festival for viewing images not showing them, so the quality of the photojournalism at every corner was incredible and brutally humbling as an emergent. Instead of being daunted by this I think this worked in my favour, "Did you hear about the crazy English kid who shot all the power stations in the dark on 5x4? He's over there go have a look.." I think having beautiful C-Types and working on Large Format really made the project stand out from the rest of the work on offer.

How did your solo show come about?

I formally organised a meeting with the gallery to show them my work, more hoping for feedback than a show. This was only after I'd shot 3-4 sites but the curators trusted me to complete the work and saw the potential. It's actually worked out extremely well timing wise as its taken 7 months for me to get the project out to the rest of the world, the show in February is the same month the Saturday Times are running the work.

Are you part of a collective? And how does this affect/help your work/ the promotion of your work?

Yes, I founded Roof Unit, with another photographer. It really helps drive you on, surrounding yourself with other determined photographers.. Testament to this we are bucking the trend and are all extremely busy this year. I think in line with how I present my folio, online or when pitching to the galleries, we only let the best work out of the door. Photographers are perfectionists, and we bounce creative, technical and marketing ideas around each other.. We can recognize faults and strengths in each others practice and not afraid to help each other along. I also live in the back of the studio, so it means I can have a 80 hour week with everything I need at my fingertips. We use Roof Unit to appear larger to clients than we are as individuals. It offers them reassurance on our work which they value.

What equipment do you shoot with and does this affect your way of shooting?

My personal work is always shot on 5x4. The first 500MB Tiff that I opened up in Photoshop to clean just made any digital back and non prime lenses look like a toy. I love the realism of the grain and the unpredictably of reciprocity failure and colour shifts. It also makes me very, very selective in camera, so I only commit to the headache of setting up when I know the shot is a killer. At night the ground glass is completely black so I find myself working out the shot out of the camera and spending more time in the landscape. The tilts and shifts are great for really changing the nature of the scene and I also love the feeling of working with a camera made of wood, steel and glass, rather than plastic with batteries.

Commercial work is shot on my new 5d Mark ii.. This thing eats hard drives alive, demands the best glass and a tripod!! Its also helped me think about the next step into video.

To summarise, what do you feel are the key elements to your progression and success as a photographer?

A lot of hard work, motorway miles and sleepless nights! In reality the photography sector is incredibly tough and competitive. However if you make original and strong work, then show it to the right people and persist, you will do well. There is no route or correct way into photography but I've met many tired assistants who aren't shooting or photographers producing commercial work they hate for their mortgage. I'm constantly motivated because I produce fantastic work that I'm connected to. Importantly, though away from the imaging, photography is either a successful business or a hobby that will bankrupt you. Things like cashflow and planning everything for the long run are as important as your images.

(originally posted on metavisual)

Ben Roberts, Higher Lands

I've been chatting to Ben Roberts recently about his work and his practices as a photographer. Ben is an emerging photographer who manages to balance making some really great personal projects with assisting and shooting commercially. His ongoing project, 'Higher Lands' strikes me as his stand out project, investigating youth culture in the upper Highlands of Scotland. He combines candid moments of adolescence and experimentation; growing and learning in a somewhat isolated small community, with thoughtful simple portraits that somehow seem imbued with honesty. Each subject takes on a character, showcasing the wonderful characteristics of youth; a stubborn sense of self assurance, long haired boys with languid stares, powder pink girls with stroppy distain, wide-eyed naivety bursting out of bright colours, bodies accessorised with felt tip pen. You can see more of his work here.

(orginally posted on metavisual)

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here, due to my short stint running the blog Metavisual. I won't go into the reasons for it ending but it has subsequently meant that I've had a bit of time to dedicate to my own work and to a venture that myself and Anna are embarking on...more details will follow shortly! I'll be posting some of the content from Metavisual on here before it disappears.