18th August 2016

Q&A: Photographer Alan Powdrill

Aside from being a dedicated Hackney Winter Night Shelter volunteer alongside our very own Sabine (which is how the two met), Alan Powdrill is a photographer of everything from people and their pets to lucid landscapes to eccentricities of the everyday home.

Drenched in saturated hues and a charming vibrancy that assigns an almost satyrical tone to many of his images, Alan’s photography captures magic in the mundane and encourages the viewer to reconsider their judgement of what is beautiful and intriguing.

Reflecting an overt interest in light and colour, many of Alan’s photographs see him exploring the way colour impacts our perception of an object and how it falls upon natural and man-made surfaces with entirely different effect.

We asked the photographer a few questions about his diverse portfolio of work.

Can you tell us a little about your latest project?

One of my favourite recent projects is Saturation. I've always been a massive fan of landscape photography and I'm always seeking a way of showing landscapes in a different light, or in a way the human eye doesn't naturally see the world around us. This project involved many long nights in forests around London (Epping, Hainault, Hackney) alone with a flash light and large format camera. I wanted to make images that were bold, graphic and eye-catching, showing these majestic trees from a different perspective.

The subjects of your photographs vary from animals, to architecture, to landscapes and inanimate objects. How do you choose them?

My aim always is to show beauty in the ordinary, whether that be a landscape, a table tennis table or a discarded stuffed toy. Photography has the power to make us look at the world from a different point of view and question our opinions of what is interesting or not.

The colours in many of your photographs are very intense and we can see some experimentation with them. How do you perceive the role of colour in photography?

For me there are two strands to my work as far as colour is concerned; strong and bold in projects like Saturation, or muted and subdued in land and seascapes. This reflects the different passions, power and emotions colour can communicate in photography. Along with light, colour and how you treat it, is the most important aspect photography can convey.

Other than a camera, what is your must have item for any shoot?

An inquisitive imagination and energy bars. Photography has been my passion for as long as I can remember and it's very hard to go anywhere or look at anything without thinking or seeing photographs.

If you could shoot anywhere/anyone in the world, where/who would it be?

At the moment Canada is on my radar for it's vast landscapes. Or anywhere with sun as the UK summer yet again turns into another damp squib.

Do you have a favourite photograph, that you've taken?

It's very hard to pick out one but Sylvester Los Angeles has always been close to my heart. My day job as a portrait photographer took me to LA and I escaped the studio we were working in to find the famous cartoon character discarded on the corner. I grabbed my camera and tripod and spent a quiet 20 minutes lost in a very Hollywood moment.

What are you working on at the moment? Can you give us any insight into future projects?

The next project has always been the thing that drives me on in photography and I have a couple of really interesting landscape projects on the go at the moment. Watch onwallimage.com for details!

Find Alan and his work at Brighton Art Fair 22- 25 September.

Above 1: Exit Sign Brooklyn, 2: Arizona Street, 3: Epping Forest, 4: Swimmer Cuba, 5: Fake Flowers Inverness, 6: Sylvester, 7: Gym Chairs Devon, 8: Table Tennis, 9: Climbing Wall 02 London, 10: Woolacombe Beach.