Last Updated on 10/31/2024 by Chris Gampat
“In my head, I’m chatting away to myself almost constantly whilst out taking pictures,” says photographer Paul Harrison to the Phoblographer in an interview. “That internal monologue massively helps with spotting the connections that are common in my work. I’ve found that if I say a potential connection ‘out loud’ in my head, I’m much more likely to connect it to something else, art gallery rooms or even half a second away.” Paul’s work is a fascinating study of public irony, chaos, and emotional connection to the dialogue between the artistic and technical mindset. Indeed, he’s both an aspirational and inspirational goal.
All images by Paul Harrison. Used with permission. For more, please visit his website, his shop, or Instagram @thepaulharrison.
Paul always had an interest in the arts, but in his mind, it was always something that other people did. He felt the same way about food. “It’s what makes life worthwhile but you don’t just then become a chef,” he tells the Phoblographer. “A bit more money in my pocket from giving up smoking meant that I took the plunge and bought my first (and still only) camera, a secondhand Fuji XT3, and a couple of lenses on eBay in January 2020 with the idea that I would try street photography…” It was perfect — his day job as a tour guide made it really simple for him to be out taking photos.
Shortly after getting his camera, the pandemic happened. But he got to shoot a lot for seven weeks. Paul practiced street photography in museums and out in public. He was used to walking nearly endlessly anyway.
“The Ladies with Red Hats photograph that I’ve included was from that first week. It’s wild that it’s probably my most popular photograph.”
Paul Harrison
He’s not crazy about gear. In fact, he thinks that he’s missing whatever gene gets people excited about cameras. Sometimes he thinks that image stabilization would help, but he’s very happy with what he owns. “It’s small enough not to particularly stand out on the street or in the galleries but hefty enough that its survived a couple of falls,” he tells us. “The only time its struggled was taking a monsoon’s worth of rain on a cold January morning trying to photograph a strange folk festival in deepest rural East Anglia.” He almost exclusively uses the Fujifilm 23mm f2 which we rated very highly.
Paul’s images have a solid dose of British humor in them that we see in the work of Martin Parr. While his project ideas aren’t as developed as Parr’s Real Food, there is a consistency in his photographs that work well together as a portfolio. To capture moments like this, a photographer has to pay attention to the scenes in front of them and understand that they need to shoot an image immediately. Paul’s work doesn’t incorporate artistic effects such as slow shutter speed, camera shake, flash, etc. And this is evident when he talks about IBIS. Indeed, Paul’s work is incredible — and we see him as one of London’s best street photographers. We’ve interviewed a ton: including Craig Reilly, Jan Enklemann, George Pantoulas, Walter Rothwell, Stephen Flounders, and Cam Crossland amongst others. There’s a good reason why we’d like to see more from him. Part of that has to do with AI.
As it is, Paul thinks that the term is overused. “Buy this bit of software, car, or yogurt; now powered by AI,” he jokes. However, he truly wonders what images the algorithms were fed considering what it makes. But as a street photographer, he doesn’t see it as a threat just yet.
“I’ve been saying please and thank you to my Google Home for a couple of years now so I’m sure I’ll be spared.”
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.