In January 2017, I spent a month in Sri Lanka working on some artistic projects. The pictures are to form an exhibition in the second of my 'Month In' series. The last 'A Month in Perthshire' is due to published with an exhibition this year in Aberfeldy.
I've been running street photography courses for the past couple of years around Shoreditch run through the Indytute.
"The wilds of Shoreditch are home to a number of interesting specimens. The area is mainly populated by the distinctive Hipster, but you may catch a glimpse of a sharp-suited banker or a shot of a fast-moving bike courier as he weaves in and out of the traffic; a rare capture, the gazelle of the Urban Jungle. Join award-winning documentary photographer James Millar for an educational and humorous journey around the capital. Improve your photography skills and see the city afresh. Learn how to bother interesting-looking people in the street for a picture without getting punched, pick up some photographic 'art-speak' to impress your friends with, and acquire a few picture-taking gimmicks to make people think you know what you're doing."
On the cusp of gentrification, this corner of South East London is home to a wide variety of individuals. Local Ben Wallace and I spent time getting to know the area.
Bens words: As with most shopping streets in twenty-first century Britain if you look above the new Perspex signs of the modern shops on Deptford High Street still bears the scars of its previous incarnations, ornate brick work advertising long since closed department stores, tile work more robust and durable than the pubs and breweries they advertise, there is something different Deptford has to offer us which is hard to quantify. I’ve never been to Venice but I know there is a quality of light there that is utterly beguiling, I know this from the huge volume of work from artists who want to share it with me. When you get Deptford it is the same feeling, you want to share it with the world and keep it secret all at once.
“The appeal of a tintype for me is a return to picture-making as a craft, a skill, as well as an artistic endeavour. Tintype is the complete antithesis of digital photography; it‘s time-consuming and expensive, requires a knowledge of chemistry and skill with a camera. The end result is a single object, an image made literally of silver, which cannot be replicated, and that‘s the beauty of it for me.”
One of my passions is wet-plate photography or tintypes as they are known. Along with Ben Wallace and Heather Tyrrell we have founded The Tintype Studio where we shoot portraits and run workshops teaching the technique.
My latest exhibition ‘A Love Letter to Perthshire’ is my second solo show at the Watermill Gallery in Aberfeldy and features portraits and tintypes taken over the past six years. It’s an intimate portrait of the people and places of a magical corner of the Highland Perthshire which I have known my whole life.
The show opens on the 21st January and runs until early March.
