Photographers, artists, filmmakers, technologists
Let your work say more than the finished piece.
You know what goes into the work. Your audience usually sees only the last day of it: the print, the garment, the painting, the song. Everything that led there stays in the studio.
I’m interested in what happens when a piece can bring some of that with it.
- A painting that shows the hands that made it.
- A garment that tells you where the brambles for its dye were picked.
- A photograph that carries the voice of the person in it.
The finished work stays complete. The extra layer is there for anyone who wants to go further.
you don’t need to change how you work. you need curiosity, and a sense of when to leave well alone.
From Still to Seen
Fourteen practices, fourteen answers.
To see what this looks like across different kinds of practice, start with From Still to Seen: a photobook of fourteen creatives from Hull and East Yorkshire, and what of them stays in the things they make.
A musician making songs out of anger at the systems that dehumanise people. A crime novelist whose Jack Russell stars in his children’s books. A self-taught 3D printer who once made a memorial poodle. A model who does her best work at three in the morning while the house sleeps. A fashion bio-designer dyeing cloth with brambles and seaweed. An oil painter fed by the Renaissance and by her taxi passengers. Alongside them are a yoga teacher, a children’s author and illustrator, a writer, a portrait photographer, singer-songwriters, a painter and puppeteer, and an actor still trying out the words “actor singer”.
Andromeda (Bizarre Fae)Musician
Chris TurnbullAuthor
ClarionMultidisciplinary creative and model
Dylan Plummer3D printing creative
Efia RoseWellness practitioner and yoga teacher in training
Jack HebdenFashion bio-designer
Jodie SmithChildren’s author, illustrator, designer and founder of Happy Doodles
Olohuntosin (Lara)Creative writer and storyteller
LewisPortrait photographer
Mica KhanOil painter
Ruth ToyntonSinger-songwriter and founder of The Musician’s Green Room
Teddy LucinePainter, poet, playwright and puppeteer
Sean McTiernanSinger, guitarist, poet, songwriter and abstract artist
Ze RebelleActor and singer-songwriter
Each has a portrait and a conversation on the page, and one photograph of every person moves when you scan it. Fourteen practices, fourteen answers to the same question. One of them is probably close to yours.
See the bookThe IRIS Storytelling Toolkit
Without becoming a technologist first.
I keep asking how much of a person a photograph can hold once it has sound, film and augmented reality in it. From Still to Seen was also an R&D project, supported by Innovate UK and DCMS, and the IRIS Storytelling Toolkit came out of it. It holds what I’ve learned from making this work, set out so you can bring sound, film and AR into your own practice without becoming a technologist first.
Be among the first to explore the IRIS Storytelling Toolkit at a special launch price.
Ways to get involved
Open calls.
When a project needs sitters or makers, I put out a call. That’s how the fourteen came in.
Workshops and labs.
Small, practical sessions across disciplines, built around what your work needs, not what the software can do.
Making together.
If you’re a photographer, filmmaker, technologist, an artist of any kind really… I’d like to build exhibitions, pilots and commissions with you, with the layers part of the idea from the start.
On bigger projects, I bring together and manage my own creative teams, and I’m just as comfortable working as part of a wider multidisciplinary one, alongside other artists, filmmakers, producers, technologists and community organisations. Not everything has to be delivered by me alone.
calls go to the newsletter first Get the calls first
Your work stays yours.
Everything runs on clear consent, proper credit and respect for your intellectual property. Immersive storytelling is treated as a shared practice here, not an extractive one.