A Blunt Instrument…
is a sequence of fourteen images originated on large-format negative and published in 2025.

Featuring the traces of tracked military vehicles on the soft ground of Salisbury Plain. Part of the British Army’s
Salisbury Plain Training area, this is land my father farmed during the 1960s when the area was leased from the army
for agricultural production. It is where I spent an idylic early childhood, and in these fields would often play at ‘soldiers’.

The title A Blunt Instrument … is a reference to political scientist John Mearshaimer’s
observation on the use of military force for international relations.

In 1920 the RAF established a temporary airfield for the ‘policing’ of nationalist resistance. The operation known as Z Force
is recognised as the first exclusive use of arial bombarbment instead of air power used in support of ground troops. Therefore changing forever the nature of warfare. The site was adentified using archive photographs held at the RAF Museum, Hendon. 

The Berbera – Harrar was a railway proposed by the British Colonial Govt. linking Berbera with the hinterland. It was surveyed in 1903 but never built. Detailed survey maps are held in the National Archives, Kew and using these as a reference I made photographs along the originally proposed route. 

Images originated on 4×5″ negative.

Originated on 4×5″ negative

All originated on medium-format negative

Mogadishu – Lost Moderns

From a wider collaboration with architect Rashid Ali.
This is a selection.
All originated digitally. 2013

Images made in France since 2002.
All originated on medium-format negative.

A selection from a series produced on road trips made in North America and Europe which began in 1996 and is continuing.
Included are images published in Along Some American Highways (2003).
All originated on medium-format negative.

Found on Salisbury Plain 2015
Originated on 4×5″ negative

Hats off to Roy Harper…

Knebworth Park August 11 2009
On the 30th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s appearance.
All originated on medium-format negative.

During the early part of 1982 I was an exchange art student at Copper Union, New York. I lived on Clinton Street in the Lower East Side. These are some of the many 35mm colour slides I produced during my time there.