London Shopkeepers

This photographic series was made between 2022 and 2025, across London. I went door to door, asking shopkeepers if I could photograph them in exchange for an A4 print. The project began with a single request, one yes, and grew into a sequence of more than 1,600 portraits.

Each sitter was photographed in their own space, on their own terms. I told them they could stand or sit however they wished, without direction. The intention was simple: to allow people to present themselves as they are, without performance or correction, and to trust that what emerges from that encounter is enough.

What I am interested in is resemblance, not as likeness alone, but as a form of social truth. The images reflect how body language, expression, clothing and presence construct identity in everyday life. In doing so, the work questions how we read class, status and belonging from appearance.

In many cases, it took longer to spell a person’s name than to take their photograph. Many of the names were unfamiliar to me, drawn from a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, reflecting the mixed, multilingual reality of a city like London.

In some cases, that simple exchange of names became the most complex part of the encounter, more so than the image itself. It is a small but telling detail of what it means to work through a city that is densely populated, constantly shifting and shaped by migration.

London is made of foreigners. I am also a foreigner here. That shared position runs through the work.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “England is a nation of shopkeepers.” I am interested in what that phrase means today, not as a fixed idea, but as a way of looking again at the people who quietly hold the city together.