This cityscape looking over Berlin represents a very special time for me. It was the birth of what would turn out to be whole new way of seeing the world.

It was 2011 & I had just finished a high profile contract managing a large photography studio near Düsseldorf, Germany. Before I flew back to London I decided to take the train to Berlin for a few weeks to unwind, explore and put my camera to more creative uses. I had decided not to renew the contract (despite being pressured to do so) so I could pursue my own path as a creative image maker

Whilst I was in Berlin, sitting in an old reclining chair in a smoky cafe one sunny morning the core for a large body of photographic work hit me. The idea of being able to collect things with my camera, to be able to use it as a recording medium for the world I see about me. Looking back I see more clearly how this seed was planted and why it grew. 

I had been staying and working in Düsseldorf so perhaps subconsciously that school of photography had impacted my way of seeing. In the Museum Ludvig in nearby Köln (Cologne) there were pieces by Bernd and Hilla Becher, who would systematically document the German industrial landscape spawning an entire genre of contemporary photography. They are the true grandparents of collecting and finding similarities and differences with a camera.

Back to that smoky cafe in Berlin, this is what I wrote that morning:

Doors, Entrances, Exits and Boundaries

Doors are bridges from inside to out, from space to space. If walls define boundaries then it is the door that enforces them. They allow heat, light, air and people to propagate through these synthetic barriers. They are both welcoming and forbidding simultaneously. 

An open door marries two spaces together, harmoniously bridging them from one to another. An interconnection between inside and out or a mediator between two internal spaces. They seek equilibrium.

A closed door invites inquiry, it warns of ownership and occupancy. However it is the locked door that enables some whilst denying others giving in to only two things; permission or brute force. They are such an intrinsic part of our everyday existence but often overlooked as we pass through them. They keep us in, they lock us out, they represent the boundary between spaces.

That was it. I didn't ever realise the significance at the time. As though I had moved through a one way mirror that morning in the hazy cafe I spent the rest of my time in Berlin collecting images of objects. Doors, windows, streetlights, city scapes...

Whenever I would travel over the next ten years I would continue to index the world. Slowly the collections built up. Every new place I visited would become broken down into compartments for my camera to record and catalogue. 

Paris, NYC, Copenhagen, Miami, Barcelona, London as well as the towns and villages in between. The images of Doors represented my largest body of work. So often overlooked and yet intrinsic to everyday life. 

We pass through them everyday. They keep us in, they lock us out, representing the boundary between spaces.

A total of 256 photographs. Shot between NYC, Italy, Spain, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Berlin , Amsterdam & Miami shot on digital, 35mm and medium format film.