Growing up, I was passionate about photography. My heroes were André Kertez, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Don Mccullin. I spent my first couple of years in London prowling the East End, searching for the ‘Decisive Moment’ – that undefinable split second that finds wonder or poignancy, even in the most mundane of things.
 

A few years after finishing a Diploma in Art and Design at Sir John Cass School of Art I managed to open my own studio in Spitalfields Market and spent the 90’s shooting the pop stars of the day; All Saints and the Spice Girls, Boyzone and The Back Street Boys, Natalie Imbruglia and even JayZ.
 

The Decisive Moment, I discovered, exists in portraiture as well as street photography. Expression is a moving target and I found the instincts required to capture somebody’s character already developed by my experience in the street.

During a long and varied career, in everything from business to fiction, I have never lost the will to capture people and their world in camera – now it’s time to  pick-up, professionally, where I left off.

Some of the work you see here is a small proportion of what I shot in the 90’s, quite a lot of it went missing when I closed the studio and put stuff into storage at the end of the 90’s. I hope it gives you a flavour of what I do. Other pictures have been shot for friends or bands and musicians that I know and for which I have a particular fondness - and now there is some bang up to date stuff as the commisions start to roll in.

 

If you like to work with me then do get in touch.
 

Thanks for reading 

 

 

 

Mark Cairns