Smoke of the city rising up into the sky

In Janaury when it was cold and clear in London I went round to Tony Benn's place just behind Notting Hill, with Isabella who was interviewing him for the paper. He talked about his childhood, and his hopeful ideas for politics still today - all while clicking insistently on his lighter to try to get his pipe going. It wasn't until he got a moment before I took the picture that he finally lit it - I snapped him just as he lifted it up and breathed in deeply. The interview can be found here.  

Hemmed in by the desert

The Botanic Gardens in Cambridge are lined with incredible wooden-framed greenhouses, full of giant cacti, tropical plants and tiny shrubs. Inside, they're baking hot and full of light. We ran a feature in the paper on places to visit in the town, and so I cycled over to here to take some pictures of the gardens - I think we ended up with a big cactus on our front page, which was pretty great.

From the terraces inward

At the beginning of August I went to Athens to visit Aris, where we walked around in the blistering heat, stopping off to drink coffee with ice cubes floating in the glass. We visited open air summer cinemas, gallery rooftops for glasses of wine, the disused Olympic stadium, and bakeries for cheese and spinach pies. We drove to the beach, sat on his grandmother's terrace for the best view of the Acropolis in the city, and ate pieces of watermelon at a local market in the suburbs. 

I felt for a while that I could see little evidence of the Greek crisis, but derelict store fronts became more noticeable as we covered more of the city. I was amazed by how cheap it could be to eat out in the city, and many galleries had weekly openings until midnight free of charge. I was also surprised by how late everything operated until, with films being screened at 1am, and one bar that we went to closing only when the sun came up and it became too hot to remain in the open air. 

Black clouds and deep darkness

About halfway through my flight back from Greece I glanced out of the window and saw how incredibly clear the sky was as we flew over the rocky landscape of the Alps, with the form of the clouds below us creating just as dramatic shapes. After I took these pictures I thought about how I'd never contained so much area and information in a single shot, and then got distracted by imagining how it would feel if you could climb on those clouds as if they really were mountains. 

He tore his clothes

These are a few more pictures from the accessories series that Alice and I published in Hot & Cool last summer. And Issue Four is now out! Find it at Dover Street Market and the Serpentine Gallery if you're around in London, or find more stockists/buy online here.

He stopped for the night because the sun had set

Recently each morning when I wake up on increasingly sunny mornings, I can see a rainbow of three colours on the ceiling above my bed. One morning I took a picture of it close up, standing on my bed, and then looked down and saw the light bright on the sheets.

Honeycomb, sweet to the soul

I took these pictures of Rosa in Bella's kitchen, under the light streaming through the glass ceiling on a sunny Sunday afternoon, after we'd spent the weekend wandering around exhibitions, trying Swedish wine, and planning for the summer.

Narrow windows high up

As my exams came near I spent more and more time at home, looking out the window at the wet weather and feeling increasingly claustrophobic - alleviated only by brief trips to the library. I took both of these in moments of feeling idle - it feels slightly odd looking back at them now that my degree is finished for good. 

  

Drawing up their lines

Quentin Blake comes for dinner each year at my college in Cambridge as it turns out that he used to study English here too as an undergraduate back in the day. As he wandered through college he marvelled at how much taller the trees are now, but how familiar it all still looks. I took his portrait in a corner of the deserted college bar just as it was getting dark outside, before he had to dash off to give a talk at the Union. Below is a picture I snapped also of one of the prints he donated to us.

A curtain of blue

Aliya and I walked across the meadows that stretch out from the edges of Cambridge, dodging thistles, nettles and cows. After we discovered crossed paths a few months ago, and overlaps from years back, we realised strange similarities that culminated in both of our arrivals in Cambridge. It was great walking along the trail of the river before I took these pictures of her in the last bits of early evening sun, when the sky was hovering between resolute white with small moments of blue coming through.