Niall McDiarMiD
By going to over 200 towns around the UK and photographing the people he meets, this street photographer has created a rich portrait of today’s multi-cultural society. He talks to David Clark
Find out what’s taken this street photographer all round the UK
How
did you get into photography?
I was brought up in Aberfeldy, a small village in Perthshire, but I moved south to England to study Engineering at university. However, I wasn’t cut out for engineering and didn’t really like it. Instead, I got a job as a reporter in the trade press for about 18 months.
During that time I became very friendly with the photographers who were working there. I liked what they were doing and thought it was something I could do. So in the early 1990s, I went to the London College of Printing to study photojournalism. I did that for a year, and have been a freelancer since then. I haven’t really had any proper jobs.
What kinds of professional work have you done?
I’ve done a variety of commercial and editorial work, mostly portrait-based. A lot of it has been done for book publishers, such as covers and author portraits. I was quite successful until
around 2008, when the economy crashed and I began to lose heart in it.
At the same time my children came along, and I was at home looking after them more. I felt I needed to get out and I started doing pictures near where I live in south London. Out of that situation, my street-based portraits were born.
How did this personal work develop?
I had been doing street photography for a number of years, and that’s where my passion is really. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I’m good at stopping people in the street and persuading them to be photographed. After starting to do that in south London in 2011, I began going across the whole of London, then towns around London.
I hooked into this idea that you can get trains quite cheaply if you go outside
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but I’m good at stopping people in the street and persuading them to be photographed”
peak times. If my wife was at home looking after the kids and I had a little bit of free time, I’d jump on a train.
So you didn’t plan the travelling in a systematic way?
No, I fight against that really hard. I try not to look at the places I’ve been, and I never tick off places on a map. It’s all random.
Sometimes I just see a place and think, “Oh, that looks interesting,” and go there. I like going to places where not much street or documentary work is done. Sometimes I go back to the same town
more than once, or do two or three towns in a day.
After I’d been to a lot of towns in the south, I thought there was the potential to do it around the country. I’ve been to over 200 towns so far. One day I’ll sit down and count them all.
How have you got your work known?
I published my first book, Crossing Paths, in 2013. I took out a small loan and published it myself. It sold well, so I got into the idea of publishing books and reaching an audience. For the second book, Via Vauxhall, I shot local residents and commuters, mostly on bus routes.
Last year I had a big exhibition at the Museum of London, and I was recently approached to show my work at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, which was amazing. A book, Town to Town, has been published alongside the exhibition. So there’s been a steady growth of interest in my work.
How do you choose your subjects?
I find it difficult to remember why I was initially drawn to photograph
a particular person. Sometimes it’s a colour they’re wearing, but often it’s just because they’re in a situation and I know it’s going to work as a picture; everything comes together in a positive way. I’m very interested in the details of their clothing, expression and the way they stand or sit.
I like picking up things about contemporary society that we all probably don’t notice. There are obvious things like tattoos, which you see much more often now, and passing hair trends. People holding their mobile phone is quite big at the moment. Often the photograph is not so good if there’s a phone in there – but it is what people do every day, so I don’t want them to take it out.
How do you approach people you want to take a shot of?
After I’ve seen someone I’d like to photograph, I have a chat with them first. Sometimes I end up taking a photo, sometimes I don’t. Often I chat with them for quite a while then I broach the idea of taking a photo. Sometimes they say yes and sometimes no, but I’ve done it for a long time now, so I’m experienced about what I’m looking for. There are times when I meet lots of nice people but end up with no photos, so I tend to be a bit selective about who I’m looking for.
Backgrounds seem important in your work…
When I see someone who I want to
“I’m trying to make pictures that say something about the country, but also images that say something about my style”
photograph, I start looking around for somewhere I can do something.
I look for a colour clash, or a colour that matches what they’re wearing. I don’t want them to go very far to find a good background. It has to be somewhere very close to where I meet them, so it’s quite a quick process.
I take a good number of images where this background approach doesn’t work quite so well, but I’m very keen that
I have a signature look. I’m trying to make pictures that say something about the country, but also images that say something about my style. I don’t think there’s much point in doing street photography or portraits unless you have a very distinctive style.
Do you find typically that more people say yes than no?
Some days. Sometimes everybody says no, then I think, “God, this is useless, why am I doing this?” On other days I get too many people saying yes, and I think I’m not challenging myself enough. I’m conscious I sometimes need to develop a situation that’s more tricky and not always go for the easy ones.
Not as many people say yes as you might think. Working on the street, there are a lot of knock-backs and you have to learn to take them and move on.
What equipment do you use?
I currently use a Fujifilm GFX 50S, which is a 50-megapixel camera. I’m not that