How did creativity shape your childhood? Did you grow up with art, film, or photography around you, and what role did it play in your sense of self?

Creativity was present in my childhood, but not in the form of photography or film. Growing up my family were not overly creative, but my brother and I found a deep love for music from our older sister. We were given guitars in our early teens and wrote played in bands together for years, we spent a lot of our teenage years writing songs together. Music was everything.

I completed a Sound Composition and Production degree at University, but a new love for film had already entered into my psyche, and during the second year of my degree I started shooting music videos, creating live visuals and short films.

What first sparked your move into photography and film? Was there a moment, a trip, or a feeling that made you pick up a camera and commit to this path?

My realisation of the visceral power of imagery came in the form of album covers, then music videos. I grew up in the era in Australia of waking up early on a Saturday morning to watch RAGE, our music video TV programme. The 90s was an incredible time for music videos.

In my second year of University I took an audio visual subject that introduced me into video editing - it was also a requirement to make a short film as our final assessment. From that moment on I never looked back. I bought my first camera at 21 and started shooting music videos and fashion films, and taking photos of my friend’s bands, even on some of the same shows my band was playing on.

I quickly became obsessed with the look and feel of analog mediums. Light burning onto something physical. 35mm photography, then VHS cameras, and when I could afford it, super 8.

Travel is such a big part of your work. What does being in new places unlock in you creatively? How does movement between Berlin, London, and elsewhere shape your gaze?

Empathy. It is the strongest and most valuable asset I have ever gained from travel, both personally and professionally.

And how that translates into my work - it causes me to slow down and focus on the minute details. I may walk down the street and see a crowded street, but if I take the time to focus on a single person, to try and understand what their story may be in this scene, thats where the art is. Witnessing and acknowledging another human’s existence is beautiful.

You can view any new city through rose tinted glasses, but as you gain empathy of the incredibly nuanced histories of its culture and people, you approach the representation of each scene with more care.

Right now there is a rapidly growing lack of empathy across the world - I wish people would travel to countries different to their own and talk to people from completely different backgrounds.

Your images often balance stillness and intensity. Where does that instinct come from? Is it intuitive, or do you think it’s rooted in your personality and how you move through the world?

I love the rawness of capturing pure human emotion, and that emotion usually presents itself in busy moments of high intensity, so I place myself in these scenes. But where I feel most comfortable is in the forest or by the ocean, by myself, staring at the clouds. Complete stillness. Just observing.

So I guess in any situation, I am always trying to slow it down, to see it all, to take it all in. Take a deep breathe, and shoot.

What motivates you to keep creating? When you hit creative walls, what pulls you back into the process?

I feel a constant need to create. A feeling that if I am not creating, I am of less use to the world. I am working on lessening this. On the same token, if I am feeling flat, unmotivated or hitting that wall, I take my camera out and

my whole outlook on the day changes. I capture whatever catches my eye. This is me slowing down to observe all the beauty there is in even the smallest moments of the day. I do posses a deep desire to want to capture the beauty of the world around me and share it with others.

One of my favourite visual artists, Alex Grey, has a quote along the long lines of ‘your job as an artist is to have experiences and then translate those experiences to people.'

I like that, it’s my purpose.

Identity and perspective are central to art. How does your own background influence the way you shoot? Do you feel your personal history is always present in your work?

I’m not sure if I see my personal history or identity in my work.

What would you like your creative legacy to be? What do you hope your body of work says about you, and about the world you captured?

I hope my work helps people take a new perspective to everyday settings, to slow down and take in all the beauty of each fleeting moment. Talk to everyone. That’s what I learnt from my grandfather, to know that everyone has a story, maybe you can help them tell it.

Do you see photography as documentation, storytelling, or something else entirely? How do you hope viewers engage with your images?

I see my form of photography is documenting, as I don’t set any of my shots up, but I am creating a story within it. I am working angles and trying to put myself in the correct place to capture a story. I want you as the viewer to create your own story.

But photography can be anything, I recently saw an exhibition by Persia Campbell in Mexico City, and her photos were all set up shoots with different objects placed inside the image, each object telling a deliberate part of the story. It was beautiful.

Can you share a recent project or body of work that feels significant to you? What’s the story behind it, and what did you discover in the process of making it?

This year I held my debut solo exhibition, titled SLOWDOWN.

SLOWDOWN was an invitation to pause.

Through photography and film, the exhibition reflected on the beauty of slowness, a gentle resistance to the rush, and a meditation on what we miss when we’re always moving. Over an 18 month period I travelled around beaches in Turkey, Greece, Montenegro and Italy, photographing people as they found their stillness by the ocean.

The body of work evolved naturally and arose without any intention to go out and shoot the type of work. After returning from one of these trips, I realised that my noticing of these people slowing down was an internal cry from my body to slow down myself. This realization came in the form of a complete burnout - I was bed ridden for a week. Through SLOWDOWN, I hope I created a body of work that may help others consider their own pace of life, pause to reflect, and reconnect with moments of stillness in their own lives, like it did for my own.

Finally, what’s inspiring you right now — outside of photography Books, music, conversations, places? What’s feeding your creative lens at this moment?

Travelling and talking to people whose background is completely different to my own. That, and I’m always staring at the clouds and stars.