One of my favourite accounts on Instagram is @es.bee he’s making really good work/photos eyes firmly fixed looking at his home ground. We chat on direct message every now and then about life and keeping creative with all the challenges that life on planet earth chucks at us and how to be able to keep on keeping on. Whilst juggling. money, work, and photography.
We chatted a bit last week on Instagram DM
CJ: How long have you been making photos?
SB : I’ve been photographing coming up to five years and I think the photos on this feature are mostly from the last three.
CJ: I featured your work on Documenting Britain around the time I first found your work I think, I was excited to see the images you are creating. I was drawn to your eye for colour and how you make a place that’s a little rundown look so beautiful, as it actually is, our every day. That most of us experience! Did you go to college to study photography?
CB: No, just picked up a camera and started taking photos, I’m not educated in photography I studied IT
CJ: I didn’t sit my GCSEs and went via an access course in media that’s where I found photography and I really enjoyed street photography. My Uncle and Dad both studied it, so I guess it’s always been around me. I struggled with dyslexia, so it was a joy to find.
SB: I’ve suffered from depression and had bad anxiety a lot, so it started with giving my brain something to think about. I love my town and have a lot of admiration for the make-do approach to life that working-class towns like Rochdale seem to have, so I attempt to show an honest representation of that really, does that make sense. I’m a bit dyslexic too. I also like nostalgia.
CJ: Do you have any memories from the photos here like the man in the van with all the carcases and the man with the dogs.
SB: When I take photos, I always imagine them on someone’s wall as I am taking them that’s how I compose every image. The man with the dogs is one of my favourite characters, he walks with a hunch, and he’s always looking at the floor.
CJ: Sounds like me with ‘Someone’s Rubbish’ photos without the hunch.
SB: He’s always gathering scrap metal and I have another photo of him having a yard sale.
CJ: I can imagine the ‘NO VANCANCIES’ / vase of flowers looking fabulous as a print on someone’s wall over a mantelpiece. Constant all year-round flowers!! I would like an A0 print.
SB: The no vacancies is one of my favourite images its actually a photo from a larger project focusing on the hotels and motels of Blackpool there’s just something about them that throws me back to when I was a kid and I would go away with my family to Blackpool and they would never book anywhere it was a bit harder then maybe. So we would be driving around trying to find a place to stay and you would be looking out of the window for the vacancies sign aha but I just love how dated and tacky they are they are so nostalgic for me and I think for a lot of people in the north who have been to Blackpool as a kid too it’s a proper working class holiday destination. The meat man was the first real photo I took where I felt confident and that I had taken an image I liked. He wasn’t as happy though.
CJ: Why wasn’t he happy?
SB: I think it was the fact he caught me taking a photo and it probably caught him off guard maybe he thought I was environmental health I’ve had that a few times, and he just gave me this stern look.
CJ: ‘The Fire’ what’s happening there?
SB: The fire I nearly missed funnily I get tip off’s, sometimes people see things and think I might like, usually mattresses or a rude spray painting on someone’s wall. Luckily someone told me to look out the window because it was only round the corner. It was a huge scrapyard on fire some kids had started it. The photo looks like it’s the end of the world.
CJ: It really does!! When taking photos do you get a feeling like a physical one, funny question I know, but I get a connected buzzy rush like a feeling of total focus and peace. Just walking, looking and exploring.
SB: Yeah, I do always feel like I am really lucky.
CJ: I forget other things at that moment, yes lucky to see stuff, be alive. I feel like I have just landed here, with new eyes etc. Feeling lucky is a lovely feeling, isn’t it? Especially if we feel bad and have to manage depression, anxiety just general life stress. It can change one’s focus. It’s like channelling new energy.
SB: I think once you become a photographer you start noticing things and moments. You never see the world in the same way.
CJ: 100 per cent!! I’ve always noticed detail to the point it’s bugged me and the photos I take I think are an outlet for that. You become an observer of your world. I personally think I have always been like that, and I think many photographers are. The camera is a great excuse.
SB: Even now family and friends have looked at my work and things and they start noticing stuff themselves and it makes me laugh that a bedsheet for a curtain on someone’s window has caught their eye when they would not have thought twice about or maybe a couch for garden furniture.
CJ: Love that! I saw a 3-piece suite in a garden on an estate and thought of you and your photos. It’s the little details that tell more of a story of us now. Life now! My mum used to say constantly never lose the wonder of the everyday.
SB: there is nothing wrong with sheets for curtains or sofas in the garden, you make do with what you have and that’s how I grew up.
CJ: I grew up like that too Stefan, I think elements of us, our childhoods come through in our work especially when we are looking at our hometowns, the places we know so well, they will trigger so many memories and make connections back to our lived experiences.
SB: I completely agree it’s definitely what drives a lot of my work. I grew up on a council estate and I see the same people around town as I did when I was a kid and a lot of them haven’t changed, they are still unapologetically themselves, I’m sure every town has those characters that never change, I love watching them adapt to the present and the conversations I have with them about how things are so different but at the same time so familiar like the struggles of life.
CJ: Loved chatting with you Stefan as always.
SB: No problem enjoy the sun : )
www.esbee.squarespace.com
