Paul’s exhibition of photographs at The Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, runs from 21 January – 5 June 2012. We met the man behind the camera to find out more.
What do you do?
I was a van driver in London for about six years before moving to Yorkshire. When we moved north my partner persuaded me to develop my interest in photography and packed me off to college.
I think I am more of an intuitive photographer meaning that I rarely go to a project with a clear cut idea of how I am going to produce the work. I am usually groping around trying to find how best to make images work but my focus is always on the intricacies of ordinary life, using a mixture of portraiture and landscape that blend classical compositions with contemporary issues.
What gets you up in the morning?
Our cat usually! Work-wise, what I loved about driving a delivery van was meeting people. Each day you would dip into people’s lives; a quick chat or a joke, a bit of gossip and a week later you would get the next instalment. Now I have a job where I still have the joy of meeting people without the stress. Finding something that I love doing that allows me to communicate and be creative is what gets me up in the morning.
Tell us more about Different Strokes: Extraordinary Stories
I was invited to take part in ‘Extraordinary Moves’, a project looking at changing perceptions of disability, partly because I had won the 2009 National Portrait Gallery Photographic Prize with an image of a young disabled swimmer I had photographed. Jane Grant, a woman who had lost her leg in a motorcycle accident four or five years ago wrote to me to say how much the picture had meant to her and so the idea formed. I decided to photograph a small number of disabled swimmers to explore what swimming meant in their lives.
Different Strokes: Extraordinary Swimmers Photographed by Paul Floyd Blake
Different Strokes brings together Paul Floyd Blake’s photographs of three remarkable female swimmers: thirteen year-old Danielle Bailey - a potential Paralympics Champion - swimming at The Hydro in Harrogate; portraits of teenage swimmer Rosie Bancroft; and images of Jane Grant at Starbeck Baths. This exhibition challenges perceptions of disability and describes the joy that comes from...
Paul Floyd Blake
Paul has been working with the Extraordinary Moves team to explore and capture the themes of the project. Paul Floyd Blake is a Jamaican-English photographer who started his professional career over a decade ago, after working as a lorry driver and a semi-professional footballer. After graduating with a first class degree, one of Paul’s first...
