Shooting film for as long as he can remember.
Will Reid is a London based photographer and director. Having recently produced a series documenting the life of his friends, remembering advice from his art mentor, he started to experiment with the imagery. Consisting of scratching at his negatives up with needles and scribbling all over them in Sharpie, he found himself producing uniquely interesting imagery, out of other wise ‘average photos’. We caught up with him to find out a bit more about his new project.
So recently, after I’d moved into a house in Peckham with a group of friends and started shooting photos of the goings on, I decided to use the photos I took as safe spaces for experimentation. It was only after I’d been shooting pretty constantly for a month or so that I stepped back and realised that there was a nice story emerging – and when I began looking at these images as the start of something I could continue as the year rolled on. The name “The People Around You” seemed fitting and now I’m taking photos with the intention of capturing a real sense of time and place for all of us. An ongoing time capsule that will document a year or so.
But recently I’ve felt my work was a bit bland and not standing out how I wanted it to. There was nothing particularly wrong with what I was shooting – the photos looked good – it was more that I felt that I wasn’t being creative or different enough.
The images I’ve included here are some excerpts from my early attempts to create more interesting images out of photos that would otherwise seem a bit average. My art teachers always used to say I was too afraid of making marks and drawing on stuff because I was obsessed with trying to make all my images look really polished, so this is trying to do the opposite to what I did before by scratching my negatives up with needles and scribbling all over them in Sharpie. They feel more energetic and moody now – especially the FUCK ones. I think the doodles only add to how gone and spangled someone looks when they’re pissed and you shove a camera in their face with a bright flash bulb attached to it.
I’ll be adding a full set of what I’ve shot for this project so far to my website over the next few months but for now you can see more on my Instagram if you want (@_willreid_).
Shouts to Mary Jo my art teacher for telling me to draw more, my housemates for being cool with me photographing them all the time and Oli for making my layouts look cool.
Words by Will Reid
Photography by Will Reid
