GALLERY
PROJECTS
A UNITED KINGDOM
Since 2016, I have attended a number of rallies, protests and marches across the UK where nationalist organisations have amassed to protest against multiculturalism and what they deem as open-door immigration policies. On some occasions, I spoke with and interviewed people in attendance and on other occasions I moved silently through crowds to document the experience of being at such a demonstration as unobtrusively as possible.
These images are not intended to expose or vilify but rather to remind the viewer of the continuous rise of the far-right in the UK in the last decade and to humanise those subjected to the persuasive and inciteful rhetoric of such nationalist groups.
TILL THE CASKET DROPS
These images are a documentation of the largest street gang in New Zealand the Mongrel Mob at a time when gang patches in New Zealand could still be worn legally. Grassroots, family-led movements of anti-meth consumption and anti-criminality were building within communities across the country and the gang narrative was slowly being shifted. The current situation is very different.
Since the Gangs Act of 2024, if a member is caught wearing gang insignia in public they are liable to arrest, possibly facing up to five years in prison and fines up to $5000. Beyond this, police also have powers to give non-association orders, preventing what the state considers antisocial gang activity but in many cases is actually community solidarity in the face of state repression.
A number of the members featured in this series are either currently serving time or have passed away. The future of the gang landscape in New Zealand is very uncertain; further criminalisation will only force communities underground and build tensions between gangs and police.
AFTER THE FALL
On two trips since the fall of the Al Assad regime in December 2024, one during summer and the other in winter, I spent days documenting the streets of the Syrian capital. Damascus is by far one of the most romantic and charming cities I have ever visited, its crisp mornings calling me from slumber early and its nights inviting me to stay out til the early hours.
Most of the images I produced are of street scenes and portraits of individuals I encountered. Above all, I feel these images serve as a testament to the magnetism of Ash Sham, the city that lends its name to the entire Levantine region in Arabic (Bilad Ash Sham – literally the countries of Damascus) and holds a visceral meaning of the sweetest nature to so many.
As is written on the entrance to the old city in Bab Tooma and as is immortalised in the words of Mahmoud Darwish:
“في الشام مرآة روحي” – “In Damascus is the mirror to my soul”.
GEORGE
This collection of images examines the cult of St George and material examples of his remembrance in England, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Georgia. The inspiration for this project came to me in Tbilisi while looking through an old bookstore. I found a title which I translated the first few pages of using my phone and the introduction spoke of communities in the mountains of rural Georgia that used to worship St George as a deity. This was a very strange idea to me, having grown up in the Church of England and sitting on a pew with a wooden statue of the patron saint behind it for the majority of the Sundays of my childhood.
The purpose of this series is to promote understanding of the significance of this man, this megalomartyr, while also interrogating the clear dissonance in the application of his reverence in the UK specifically, compared to other countries. It seems his true identity and origin are skimmed over in the British collective memory which is evident in his ubiquitous portrayal as a white man in the stained glass windows across England.
EVERY TIME I LOVE, MY HEART LOSES A SEED
This is a sentence that was said to me by a widow from Gaza when I was volunteering in Asira Ash Shamaliya in Palestine; she was likening her heart to a pomegranate.
I spent three months in the West Bank in 2023 working with the charity SkatePal, returning just a week before October 7th. While on this trip, I changed my Instagram profile name to @1lluminationss. I did this because I felt the moments I was photographing were illuminations of the everyday reality in Palestine.
Similar to the images I took in Syria, there are many street scenes and portraits but a real focus on this trip was documenting the scorpion tattoos that countless men I met had on their arms.
Seeds of my heart are still in Palestine.
DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER
In these images, I study the symbolism of the culture of war remembrance in the UK and present examples of this which speak to the relationship between the Church of England and the poppy, the Unknown Tommy and the Union Jack. The architecture of remembrance in London and other locations across the UK also heavily features.
This first image was taken near Temple Bar in Dublin. I feel the font of the sticker is similar to that of the often printed but more commonly engraved refrain and/or injunction that is ‘Lest We Forget’.
Through this collection, I want to leave the viewer asking why Protestant Christian identity is so tightly interwoven with the culture of World War remembrance in the UK.