Shortly after I started at design college in 1984, the Head of the Design Department took me aside. He told me I had scored unusually high in one of the entrance tests, and that it was rare for him to see a mark like that. "You have a very good eye."
I move through life visually. Sometimes something catches my eye in an instant, stopping me mid-step or drawing me back to look again. Other times I sense the potential for a photograph and stay, patiently, to capture the right moment, which usually involves the subject being there in just the right way. Much of my work comes from this instinctive way of seeing rather than from planning or staging.
Over the years, I have taken over 100,000 photographs. Of course, not all of them are great photographs. They include family life, work, experiments and plenty of bad photos. But together they form a visual record of the world as it appears to me, moment by moment.
This work is about noticing. About recognising something quietly compelling in the everyday and capturing it as it happens. What you see here is life, documented as I see it.
PS This photo was from my "portrait phase" while travelling in Bruges, Belgium, February 2014.
