Having designed and built gardens all my life, I bought my first camera when I was 47. Photography gave me an opportunity to have conversations about myself through questioning others. I don’t just take some snaps and then go, I fully immerse myself in the lives of the friends I make. Who am I to speak on anybody’s behalf if I haven’t experienced what they have, myself?
I photograph where I live, in south Wales, because I know it better than anywhere else, but in this case I wanted to document a community I lived near but wasn’t part of. The body of work this picture is part of came about as a result of working with people who have been in and out of prison and become trapped in a cycle of incarceration, freedom then back to incarceration. I was wondering what draws them back to the place where they committed all their crimes.
