Nation of Islam 1998 - Limited Edition of 50 Print

I did study photography as a Fine Art at the LCC , however my real technical knowledge I acquired because I was taught by a graphic artist and photographer called Sean Johnson . I left my degree after 2 years only because I was taken on by a music production company called Ice-pr ltd . I was not only the in house photographer but as the digital revolution was starting , I did my first album cover and made enough money to produce my work from Havana a which I started in the 1990,s . I come from an artistic family , my late mother was an actress and my father is an art dealer , as was his father . I bought my first camera with the money I made from selling a Man Ray photogram . When I was a young man I had a romantic vision of the old world . of history . and I need up by chance in Havana . It was Cuba the ignited or was the point of inception for pursuing a passion for photography and printing more than anything else . I don't have one style or format of working that easily identifies me or my work like some other photographers or artist . Like Bruce Lee who famously said ," I have no style , I use all styles , flow like water , " I love both street and documentary photography; however I also worked in production and appreciated the value of vicarious and magical methods applied in projecting the image of something to . Over the years I learned to combine the art of street photography with more deconstructive methods ; also going from analogue to digital and back in finishing a piece . Early on , my first series Havana Street Scenes , many of the initial images were not good enough , either to soft or not well enough exposed to to match certain standards , but as I spent more and more time in a dark room , and exploring the manipulation that lends itself to the craft I was able to cone to terms with the perspective I wanted to purvey even more so than the verisimilitude expected . It took many years to eventually arrive at point where I could see in my minds eye what I wished for imagining through the practical steps it would entail , and yet always appreciative and open to chance the possibility of something else . Picasso said that a great artist , ( of which I am not ) turns the disadvantages of his or her life into an advantage . I have in my own life fallen in and out of grace , I have sled down and up , and down the socio economic ladder . I refuse to be defined by class . all though I don't deny its existence .