Today I’m packing my cameras, notebooks and Yorkshire tea, plus special gifts for Sierra Leone. This will be my seventh visit to the West African country, but one that comes after a long pause, during which a lot has happened, for me and for them. For the first Christmas ever my parents will not be […]

In a field in North Yorkshire, the red poppies and the white poppies grow freely, side by side. I know this because I visit each summer to photograph them. The red poppies are in their thousands and far outnumber the white poppies, which number seven to ten. Chris, the local farmer swears he sees more […]

Remembering the Women In Whitehall, London, a few strides north of the Cenotaph and the tomb to the unknown soldier is the Monument to the Women of World War II. This tall, bronze pillar, sculpted by artist John W. Mills, is a giant coat rack. Seventeen types of uniform, representing the roles thousands of women […]

Every Tuesday morning at the Women's Refugee Group in Hull I see the fabric of life taking shape. Women driven out of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia meet, for a couple of hours, their troubles past, present and future pushed aside. They tie dye with bright reds, canary yellows, and […]

My three-week visit to Japan is almost over. I came to make two final portraits for the exhibition Poppies: Women and War. Female survivors (hibakusha) of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I met four women who were schoolgirls when the bomb was dropped on them in 1945, changing their lives forever. I attended […]