Is there a reason why you do principally portraits? Maybe, is it due to a particular encounter?

I think on a very basic level; I’m endlessly fascinated by other people. I studied fine art at university and used to paint portraits, and I have always been interested in the body as a medium to convey a range of emotions. I don’t paint so much anymore, but when I did, I used to take photo-studies of subjects. Those images aren’t too dissimilar to the photos I take today – I was heavily influenced by old-master portraits and artists such as the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum and also the photographer Bill Henson who were tapping into this kind of dark sublime aesthetic, and that’s something that informs my portraiture today. About 10 years ago, I had a bit of a health scare and it made me very much think about how I didn’t have many photos of the friends and acquaintances I used to be friends with – the punks, goths and freaks who I knew growing up in Sydney, Australia and it made me want to start documenting the people I found interesting on the streets around me in contemporary London where I now live. This led me to start taking random photos of strangers on the streets, and this eventually led me to begin photographing many people in the alternative queer scene that I would always be bumping into on the streets while looking for portraits. It was all a bit of an accident – I never really set out to photograph a particular community, but I soon found I was building up a series of portraits of a loose-knit community – people that were playing with, exploring and exploding gender norms and people turning the every-day into a sometimes surreal and magical performative experience. I’m interested in the process of transformation that people undergo through makeup and dress. It’s easy to look at the photos I take and think people are dressing up in fancy dress, but the outfits and makeup are often the result of a deep-seated urge to transcend the every-day and to metamorphose into something else and inhabit a third space beyond gender or simply beyond their every day id (if only for a night). I’m interested both in the outfit, the costume, the makeup and pageantry of the person in the photo, but also I try and capture something of who they are underneath it, stripping back the external construction to capture who they might be sitting in a room by themselves.

Can you speak about the people that you are shooting? Do you feel close to them?

The people in the photos are generally part of a loose-knit community of drag artists, performers, dj’s and musicians, fetishists, fashion designers, models, students and club kids. The photos are mostly taken in clubs and parties and are unplanned and the result of chance meetings – I’ll set up in a corner somewhere and pull people over and ask them for a portrait so I never really know who I’ll find or photograph when I go out so there’s always an air of excitement and surprise when I find someone who might have a great look that I want to photograph. There are times when I can’t find anyone or the mood isn’t right, so I’ll pack up and go home – it’s fairly intuitive and I don’t like to force the process. Looking at the photos, you don’t necessarily realise that they’re sometimes taken outside the club in a carpark or on the side of the dance floor with hazy smoke machines blowing in front of the camera and laser lights or people walking past and jumping in, interfering with the shots, it’s a fairly random situation which often runs the risk of falling apart at any moment. Still, it’s enjoyable to try to capture a sense of stillness in an often loud and frantic environment. I do feel a sense of closeness to many people in the photographs and many have become friends over time. There’s a high level of artistry and craft in the looks that I’m most drawn to.