I came across these little beauties whilst sorting through some old files. They were taken in the early 1990’s when i was doing my BA Hons degree in photography.
I remember the shoot so clearly, it was the first time i experimented with my new metz flash gun back in the day of film.
I love the raw simplicity of combining the harsh flash with the fine grain of the black and white 120 film. You had to make a commitment to either colour or black and white at the time of shooting, and because each film was hand processed and printed by me, each image was taken very deliberately. Looking back at the negatives i only took one photograph of each child.
Although this shoot was over 20 years ago (which freaks me out slightly!!) I can remember the moment i pressed the shutter for most of the images.
With the passage of time i can see and read so much more into the images now, not only the story of the children, but also my own reflected back at me.
I used a mixture of Ilford XP1 and HP4 120 film, shooting with my Bronica SQA.