Two days in Soho · A street story · Ten plates
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The brief was a "Soho street story". In Soho I learnt the value of building a series of images to create a compelling narrative.
I spent the weekend on a Leica Akademie workshop with Jocelyn Bain Hogg, an exceptional photographer whose books and exhibitions come out of staying with a subject long enough to be let in, rather than passing through it with a camera. He gave three years to the criminal underworld before "The Firm" came out of it.
I had two days. So I narrowed the subject to the life around Dansey Place, the alley running behind Gerrard Street, one of Chinatown's most iconic streets.
Gerrard Street is one of the most photographed streets in London, and the story we all know is the colour and the lanterns. I wanted the other one: the people who work themselves into the ground keeping the place clean, and the ones behind the scenes we walk straight past. Few would bother turning down Dansey Place, but it is full of life and it never sits still. Piled with rubbish one evening, completely clear by dawn and ready to go again.
What I was after was the faces, and the sheer amount of working life these few streets carry: deliveries, kitchens, the hour before service, the shopfronts holding it all together. I was less interested in the lanterns than in what happens behind them.
02
It's not whether an image is strong enough to hang on its own, but whether it earns its place in a sequence.
Editorial work asks a different question of an image than a fine art print does. A sequence needs an entrance, a middle that slows down, and a way out. Once I started thinking in those terms the gaps in what I had shot became obvious, which is a more useful outcome than a folder of good single frames.
Several great frames, I was really fond of, did not survive the edit. Described as "drowning the puppies" by Jocelyn & two that I nearly discarded turned out to be the joins that hold the ten together.
The order here is the order it is meant to be read in.
05
06
Just five minutes & a phone, in whites, beside the bins. A break is taken where there is room for it.
07
A moment on the street, the guys running in these kitchens start looking back at the camera.
10 · End
Dansey Place is a vibrant back alley off Wardour Street. Constantly changing throughout the day & night.Real life under a string of lanterns.
Chinatown & Soho, London · August 2026 · Leica Akademie, with Jocelyn Bain Hogg