Homer Sykes has been one of my inspirations for this project as he was a documentary photographer who didn’t really want to fit into the normal life of a photojournalist, getting pretty much the same photos as the 20 other people at the same event.
He instead became his own artist and made portraits of what makes Britain Britain. He was looking at the unusual and different rituals that we have as a country as well as our own customs. He likes to hone in on the details that show some contrast to hit a nerve often trying to distinguish between the working and the middle class. He finds the odd and the quirky and has made a career out of it. He says that although his photos look like he’s got a lucky moment and caught it by chance, they are very much planned out and put together.
This is the sort of style that I want my set of images to show. He captures the weird and the quirky and the individual.
Tom Roberts Photography Blog 