AK: Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?
CDB: My name is Chris Dorley-Brown, I’m from London and I am a photographer.
AK: What is your relationship with photography, and how did you get into it?
CDB: I knew from quite early on that I was going to be a photographer. It never occured to me to study it as an academic subject so I when I left school I went to work in the fringes of the industry as a print finisher and framer and began asking various photographers I came into contact with if they needed an assistant and eventually one did, Red Saunders who took me on.
AK: What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?
CDB: I think about the pictures I would like to see the most and then try to make them. These are vague ideas, not very specific. It is usually about a location in London that I am curious about, often conversations with friends or things in the news that capture my imagination and I respond to that intuitively. I sometimes visit the place and just look and watch without a camera and decide if I like it.
AK: What is the story you want your pictures to tell?
CDB: Just a reaction to how I am feeling about events that are going on around me, sometimes universal sometimes intimate. I love cities and how people move and negotiate space with each other. I like pictures that combine suggestions of history with speculation of the future. I am looking for the moment when time seems to compress and expand simultaneously and I invent reasons to record it.
AK: Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?
CDB: I am fascinated by the cities that surround the Mediterranean, Marseille, Genoa, Napoli, I have visited. I still have to see Athens, Beirut, Tripoli, Cairo. I love the history of these places, very ancient civilizations settled around the med and traded or fought with each other, I was born by the sea and love it’s presence and the effect it has on the city.
AK: What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?
CDB: See No.4 & 5.
AK: Regarding your project «The Corners»: What was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?
CDB: The Corners grew out of thinking about my family history in east London which goes back to immigration from Ireland in the early 19th century and how we integrate into a new city on arrival, how we discover opportunities and directions. The street corner was a perfect metaphor for studying this. To combine architecture and a form of portraiture that had a suggested narrative.
AK: Which project did you never finish?
CDB: In 1992 I set out to document the visibility of the European Union administrative structures, so I travelled to Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg and tried to identify what this concept looked like but it was totally uninteresting to me and I stopped and had a holiday with my family.
AK: What is that «one thing» you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?
CDB: The Industrial Revolution.
AK: If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?
CDB: To my younger self I would say be bolder, to my older self I would say enough!
AK: What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?
CDB: I say «take» without thinking, I say «make» if I think.
AK: What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?
CDB: I make the best pictures when I am in a state of reverie, not considering my role as «photographer» or personal safety. I become detached mentally but at the same time completely engaged with the subject, everything clicks into place and I hear music or talk to myself as if I am directing the action before me. Like being in the eye of a storm lashed to the mast.
AK: If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?
CDB: Pretty much anything that involved solitude, a writer maybe, a truck driver, a prisoner! I have never thought about it to be honest.
AK: How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?
CDB: To quote Tommy de Vito: «One guy goes on way and one guy goes the other and the one in the middle says what do you want from me?»
AK: What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?
CDB: I never know what is next. I only realise that I have started a project just before I finish it. I have no strategy, plan or ambition in photography, it tells me what to do and I just obey orders. I have just finished a 5 year series that I am now in the process of deciphering, to me it looks like a very melancholic response to end of an era, a breaking of a social contract between citizen and state.
AK: Thank you, Chris!
If you have a project that you would like to present on this platform, please feel free to share it using the submission form.
Photography: Chris Dorley-Brown (2009–2017)
Location: London, United Kingdom
AK: Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?
CDB: My name is Chris Dorley-Brown, I’m from London and I am a photographer.
AK: What is your relationship with photography, and how did you get into it?
CDB: I knew from quite early on that I was going to be a photographer. It never occured to me to study it as an academic subject so I when I left school I went to work in the fringes of the industry as a print finisher and framer and began asking various photographers I came into contact with if they needed an assistant and eventually one did, Red Saunders who took me on.
AK: What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?
CDB: I think about the pictures I would like to see the most and then try to make them. These are vague ideas, not very specific. It is usually about a location in London that I am curious about, often conversations with friends or things in the news that capture my imagination and I respond to that intuitively. I sometimes visit the place and just look and watch without a camera and decide if I like it.
AK: What is the story you want your pictures to tell?
CDB: Just a reaction to how I am feeling about events that are going on around me, sometimes universal sometimes intimate. I love cities and how people move and negotiate space with each other. I like pictures that combine suggestions of history with speculation of the future. I am looking for the moment when time seems to compress and expand simultaneously and I invent reasons to record it.
AK: Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?
CDB: I am fascinated by the cities that surround the Mediterranean, Marseille, Genoa, Napoli, I have visited. I still have to see Athens, Beirut, Tripoli, Cairo. I love the history of these places, very ancient civilizations settled around the med and traded or fought with each other, I was born by the sea and love it’s presence and the effect it has on the city.
AK: What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?
CDB: See No.4 & 5.
AK: Regarding your project «The Corners»: What was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?
CDB: The Corners grew out of thinking about my family history in east London which goes back to immigration from Ireland in the early 19th century and how we integrate into a new city on arrival, how we discover opportunities and directions. The street corner was a perfect metaphor for studying this. To combine architecture and a form of portraiture that had a suggested narrative.
AK: Which project did you never finish?
CDB: In 1992 I set out to document the visibility of the European Union administrative structures, so I travelled to Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg and tried to identify what this concept looked like but it was totally uninteresting to me and I stopped and had a holiday with my family.
AK: What is that «one thing» you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?
CDB: The Industrial Revolution.
AK: If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?
CDB: To my younger self I would say be bolder, to my older self I would say enough!
AK: What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?
CDB: I say «take» without thinking, I say «make» if I think.
AK: What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?
CDB: I make the best pictures when I am in a state of reverie, not considering my role as «photographer» or personal safety. I become detached mentally but at the same time completely engaged with the subject, everything clicks into place and I hear music or talk to myself as if I am directing the action before me. Like being in the eye of a storm lashed to the mast.
AK: If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?
CDB: Pretty much anything that involved solitude, a writer maybe, a truck driver, a prisoner! I have never thought about it to be honest.
AK: How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?
CDB: To quote Tommy de Vito: «One guy goes on way and one guy goes the other and the one in the middle says what do you want from me?»
AK: What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?
CDB: I never know what is next. I only realise that I have started a project just before I finish it. I have no strategy, plan or ambition in photography, it tells me what to do and I just obey orders. I have just finished a 5 year series that I am now in the process of deciphering, to me it looks like a very melancholic response to end of an era, a breaking of a social contract between citizen and state.
AK: Thank you, Chris!
If you have a project that you would like to present on this platform, please feel free to share it using the submission form.
Photography: Chris Dorley-Brown (2009–2017)
Location: London, United Kingdom
allcitiesarebeautiful.com is a community-driven, cross-disciplinary platform for contemporary documentary photography and literature.
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allcitiesarebeautiful.com is a community-driven, cross-disciplinary platform for contemporary documentary photography and literature.
News • Artists • Publishers • Submissions • Newsletter • Press • About • Imprint • RSS
