Stillsoho

'Stillsoho' is a series of black and white portraits of artists, writers and flanneurs taken in Soho, London when I worked at the French House pub. Inspired by the work of John Deakin, Ida Kar and Brassai, those who captured the Soho and Paris demi-monde of their times, I was conscious of documenting a new generation of Sohoites and the landscape of a disappearing London. Some of the places in 'Stillsoho' such as The Colony Rooms, the favorite haunt of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, no longer exist, or in the case of Sebastian Horsley, people who are no longer with us.

The series is a document of a certain time, not just in my life, but of a Soho that was still bohemian and elegantly hedonistic, when it was still driven by its history and its fast and louche past characters. The ghosts of these regulars and members of the pubs and clubs on Dean Street, were very much present, talked about and emulated. That the whole project was shot on film, and that the pictures look like they were taken many years previously, is important for the sense of nostalgia that pervaded the atmosphere in this cultural utopia.