Despite being published all over the world, being asked to create an exhibition of my work, celebrating the story of what it means to be a veterans, has been one of the most exciting and stressful periods on my career.
A few months ago I started my Pay-It-Forward project, with the intent of simply doing nice things for deserving memebers of my local community. It didn’t take long for a representative of Nottinghamshire County Council to hear of the project and approach me, asking me to speak with a local company with ties to the veterans community. Motorfinity, a car retailer who specialises in providing new cars to military veterans and members of the blue light services, wanted to support me in creating an exhibition contining images of veterans from around the region.
WO2 Nooky Nauyokas, famous for appearing on ITV Bad Lads Army, The former soldier now serves as a SNCO Discip with the RAF. In his interview Nooky talks about his career in the Army, his dread of what he was to do after leaving the Service and his career in television and film.
Shot on film: Mamiya RB67 Ilford PanF Plus @ 80 ISO
Over the past few months I have been travelling, not only across the East Midlands, but also further afield, to meet with veterans and their families, as well as representatives from military charities, to photograph and interview them about their time in Service and also their time as a veteran. It soon became clear that everyone had a very different story, so i didn’t want to create a generic image. It was very important to me that everyone was given the opportunity to be photographed as an individual. Each image told its own story, with some of the veterans choosing to be interviewed.
Some of the interviews are quite emotional and hard hitting. I allowed everyone to say it how it was, no BS, or fluff, just say it how thye saw it. Not everyone was happy about their time in the military, some were treated very poorly, while others enkoyed their time and regretted leaving the service when they did.
Les served as a Royal Marine during World War 2, and supported the landings on D-Day, defending ships from aerial bombardments and surface attacks from human torpedos. In this video, Les talks openly about the long nights under attack and his work supporting a memorial to those who died during the period.
I wanted to give my subjects as much of my time as possible. I really don’t enjoy shooting and scooting, (as a Press photographer friend of mine explains it), so I decided to shoot film whenever possible. As it turns out I used film for the vast majority of the portraits. Why? because it forces me to slow down and concentrate of getting the best images I can. Using film, especially when one only has a maximum of ten images on a roll of film, means I have to concentrate. I have always enjoyed shooting film, despite it being considerably more expensive than digital capture.
The team at Motorfinity proved invaluable, providing contacts and support that I could only dream of. They are obviously extremely customer friendly, and have a huge amount of experience making sure that their customer experience is of the highest standard, thankfully they supported me in a very similar manner. When it came to the actual exhibition I was treated to an incredible opening event, hosted by the Deputy Lord Lieutenant, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford. I was also interviewed by numerous TV and Radio channels, which was probably the most uncomfortable I’ve been in years. Despite this, I really enjoyed the experience, and would happily do it again, which is just as well, as the exhibition goes on tour around the region….
Little old Me, about to be interviewed by ITV for the local news.
Photo courtesy of Motorfinity
More images from the exhibition coming in future posts, along with full descriptions of the process I used to photograph each one.
