"Surfacing" Photograph

Paul Gadd is a British photographer living and working from Seoul, South Korea. His photography began whilst he was studying fine art at the Epsom School of Art in the UK, when he had to photograph some of his sculptures because they were too big to move. Intrigued, Paul decided to switch his focus and acquired a BA in Photography in the Arts at Swansea Metropolitan University.

When he graduated in 1997, Paul entered the Young Catwalk Photographer of the Year competition organised jointly by The Independent newspaper and Clothes Show Live and placed second out of 2,500 entrants. He was then offered a job by the legendary catwalk photographer Chris Moore and worked with him shooting fashion shows for the next four years.

Keen to explore other fields, Paul turned freelance and moved to Asia, where he began concentrating on fashion and portrait photography and participating in solo and joint exhibitions.

After a few years of working with fashion magazines and shooting more commercial work, he turned his interest back to film photography. Since then his commercial career has focused mainly on documentary shoots for magazines.

In 2011 Paul jointly run a photography studio and gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia called The Print Room. Here he would teach the traditional methods of film photography and darkroom printing, also curating exhibitions for professional and the small community of emerging photographers that The Print Room has created.
His work—whether in colour or in black and white—can range from the dark to the humorous, but it always includes a personal dimension, whether it’s his experiences or perspective on world issues.
In 2020 during the covid pandemic The Print Room in Malaysia closed its doors. Paul then moved to Seoul South Korea where he spent two years renovating a new space to work, teach and exhibit. In 2023, The Print Room (South Korea) opened it's doors.

Paul's photographs are manipulated by scratching or toning the negatives, adding different mediums during
hand-printing, then bleaching, toning and encaustic on the final stage. Though his works are in editions, each photograph is an original.