THE BRITISH LIBRARY IMAGE BANK

In 2024, I was commissioned by the British Library to create a brand new photo image bank for their design and marketing teams — 1,000-odd images made over a series of shoots documenting everything about the Library: from its 1960s industrial boiler rooms and basement stacks containing literally every book and magazine ever published in the UK, up to its rooftop solar panels, via its conservator labs that repair ancient manuscripts, its beautiful modernist reading rooms, the enormous by-appointment-only King's Library, the Treasures gallery that houses Shakespeare's first folio, Magna Carta and countless priceless volumes from all over the world, as well as its cafe, shop, exhibition spaces, and community schools programme.

Having the opportunity to peer into every nook and cranny of the Library, and observe its innner workings over a period of months was an incredible insight, and from a photographic-challenge perspective, the broad brief was a treat: I was working with kids and models as well as real-life Library staff, making documentary-style observation, getting big sweeping interior landscapes and searching for unusual angles within the Library's architecture.