Kay Jordan
Kay Jordan was a tireless campaigner for small businesses and social enterprises in the Spitalfields area. More than anyone she understood how rising property prices and the expansion of the City would threaten community based business initiatives. For decades she devoted herself to building and protecting social enterprise that addressed the needs of the local community.
As the Director of the Spitalfields Small Business Association she oversaw the refurbishment and development of over 62,000 square feet of derelict and underused buildings around Spitalfields. This SSBA initiative created over 100 new managed workspaces.
Kay always took the side of the underdog and was never impressed by the shiny rhetoric and money of big developers. Her intelligent and incisive attention to detail provided local residents and community organisations with a powerful advocacy in planning matters. Kay would cross swords with anyone to defend the interests of Spitalfields. Her principal weapons were the truth and integrity she deployed in her advocacy for the part of London she had grown to love.
These photographs of Kay were taken in 2004 in Paris. The visit was arranged to build links with community groups who were defending their area in the face of ‘regeneration’. Her untimely death has robbed Spitalfields of a selfless champion.
Tony Blair as baby Jesus
In 2003 I held an exhibition which launched Photomonth for that year called Comrades. Hosted at the Four Corners gallery it took a satirical look at the Labour government of the day. This photomontage uses a Hungarian painting of the Virgin and Child with Tony Blair’s head.
This photomontage imagines Tony Blair as a peace protester being arrested close to the Houses of Parliament. I photographed the Labour Party leadership extensively in the early 90’s for Labour Party news. The images I accrued through this work were the principle resource for the exhibition.
Here we have the simple substitution of a Tony Blair head in Caravaggio’s masterpiece depicting the supper at Emmaus.
The exhibition also included straight photographs of Labour politicians which were accompanied with quotes from the subjects.
Bikes on Brick Lane
This gentleman is about to enter Brick Lane from Grimsby Street. He has just bought some second hand clothes from one of the many make shift stalls which appeared on Sundays. The inner tube he is holding suggests a puncture which might account for his forlorn expression.
This trendy cyclist is going the wrong way down Brick Lane.
The police officer is hurrying up Brick Lane to join colleagues at the start of a demonstration organised to stop the deportation of Afia Begum to Bangladesh. After her husband was killed in a fire she was deported despite protests. The children on their bikes joined the back of the demonstration which eventually ended outside the small police station next to Heneage Street.
An accidental juxtaposition of coloured lights and bikes outside a shop in Brick Lane.
Candle portrait
I love taking photographs in low light. These portraits of Hazuan Hashim were taken in the kitchen of our flat in Whitechapel.
Without candles on the District Line.






























































