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VISU

@visuartists

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VISU facilitates high quality visual works where great talent, teams and dedication merge with resourceful problem solving.

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Thanks to @qpn_nantes Festival and @hervemarchand999 for inviting me to exhibit #InvisibleJumpers at @latelier_villedenantes

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‘Buzkashi’ has been shortlisted for the 2026 Leica Oskar Barnack Award!
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I’ve come to realise the project has a lot in common with my own children. At this point it’s entirely convinced it’s cooler and more interesting than I am (not wildly inaccurate), all the while covering me in mud and trampling over me.
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The LOBA has been running since 1980 and you can’t actually enter it. You have to be nominated by one of 130+ photography experts across 48 countries. Which means somewhere out there, someone said my name out loud in a professional context and nobody stopped them. Extraordinary scenes.
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Sarcasm briefly aside, I’m genuinely, properly chuffed. This project has involved industrial quantities of dust and mud, and several near-flattenings by half a tonne of horse. But mostly it’s involved the incredible generosity of the buzkashi riders of Tajikistan, who let a lanky New Zealander wander into their world and be part of it.
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The work will be exhibited at the Ernst Leitz Museum in Wetzlar from October. The spiritual home of the 35mm camera. Huge congratulations to the other 11 shortlisted photographers, whose work I’ve now looked through and can confirm is annoyingly good: @saher_alghorra @elliotstudio @anushbabajanyan @damir_faizulin @william.keo @cheldobeck @valerymelnikovphoto @benediktrenc @anniesakkab @davidsladekphotographer @lailaannmarie . Winners announced 8 October in Wetzlar. Thank you @leica_camera, the jury, and @ofirbarak for the nomination.
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#LOBA2026 #LeicaOskarBarnackAward #LeicaCamera #Buzkashi #Tajikistan DocumentaryPhotography BlackAndWhitePhotography CentralAsia PhotographyAwards ErnstLeitzMuseum

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I created this piece with @sen2figueroa (Sandro Figueroa), the renowned New York-based artist. This is one of the strangest places I’ve ever shot - the cooling towers of Willington, a coal-fired power station in the UK, disused since the late 1990s. The five towers reach 300 feet/90m into the sky and it’s hard to comprehend how big they are until you’re standing at the foot of them. I shot with a remote transmitter so I could sneak into the photograph to give a sense of scale.

Most of the locations I have photographed are physically in the public domain, and indeed dominate their surroundings through their huge scale, but have restricted access. They are thus imposed on the people living nearby - it is impossible not to see them - but it is impossible to engage with them, use them, or sometimes even approach them. They are often part of the energy infrastructure - arguably the biggest issue of our time - and as such tend to be the subject of controversy. Painting on prints of these huge constructions is a way of reclaiming and engaging with them.

Future of Willington: The site has been subject to various redevelopment proposals since the power station’s closure, including for housing and for a new gas-fired power station. While some initial site work has been done, the future of the site, and the ultimate fate of the cooling towers, remains uncertain.

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#josephford #streetart #opticalillusion #trompeloeil #art #impossiblestreetart #graffiti #willington #urbex #powerstation #coolingtower #infrastructure #architecture #brutalism #brutalist #sen2 #sandrofigueroa #tower #climatechange #coal #co2 #reclaim #concrete

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Thrilled to be selected as a Finalist in @assocphoto awards with this picture for @parisaeroport
Production @sandrinesauvin
#aopawards #photographyawards

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I was honoured to win Merit at the @theoneclubforcreativity Awards in New York with my Chromatic Oasis series.
When I visited Egypt I was astonished to discover this waterpark on the Red Sea coast in Egypt. Its architecture was obviously inspired by Ricardo Bofill’s “La Muralla Roja”, which was itself inspired by the architecture of North African casbahs. The use of colour and geometric design transformed what could have been a visually uninspiring waterpark into a thing of beauty.
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#adcawards #Josephford #chromaticoasis #egypt #waterpark #architecture #colour #ricardobofill #archilovers #color #theoneclub #photographyawards #winner #proud #chroma #brutalist #concrete #sun #advertisingphotography #advertising #artdirectorsclub

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Buy prints via link in bio.  I met Austrian street artist @sskirl through a gallery and was instantly captivated by his work. I suggested painting Sizewell A nuclear power station in Suffolk - the vast brutalist building seemed ripe for reinterpretation. The site itself is in a restricted zone, patrolled by armed police so painting it for real is obviously impossible, but you can walk along the beach just outside the heavily fortified perimeter.

I first shot Sizewell 2 years ago and gave Skirl a large print. He hand-painted on the print, and I returned to Sizewell to rephotograph his picture a year later. Unfortunately on the first visit it was too windy to manoeuvre the unwieldy artwork and I had to give up shooting. On the second attempt the grass was too green to match the original photograph, but on the third try early last autumn, everything came together. The grass was the right colour, there was no wind and the light was beautiful. I thought everything was good until I saw a squad car coming past. They blipped their siren but left me alone, to my relief.

Skirl is known for his distinctive abstract monochrome murals featuring fluid, swirling patterns. His work, often created using freehand techniques, interacts harmoniously with urban architecture, transforming walls into dynamic, almost organic compositions. Skirl’s style is rooted in movement and rhythm, evoking a sense of continuous flow, making his murals both mesmerising and immersive. His art can be found on streets and buildings across Europe, blending street art with contemporary abstraction.
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#josephford #sizewell #nuclear #nuclearpower #sizewella #powerstation #infrastructure #brutalist #concrete #archi #architecture #suffolk #radioactive #skirl #austrianartist #abstractart #streetart #opticalillusion #trompeloeil #art #impossiblestreetart #graffiti #fineartphotography #fineartphotography #artphotography #sunset

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As I was about to shoot the riders on this day, a thick bank of fog rolled in. Blanketing what was a pristine (if bloody freezing) morning, with views of the snow capped mountains beyond. The result was an Avedon-esque background for our outdoor studio in a field to create these images.

Buzkashi, meaning “goat pulling” in Persian, is the wild, mad as a bag of cats sport of Tajikistan and its neighboring ‘Stans.’ Think polo - but with a headless, eviscerated goat instead of a ball, hundreds of riders, and no formal teams. Rooted in the nomadic cultures of Central Asia and played for hundreds of years
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#horses #buzkashi #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #tajikistan #portrait

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We visited the farm of one the Buzkashi riders and were met with incredible hospitality. It was a frigid morning with puddles and mud frozen solid on the ground. Before creating any images we sat together in their guest room for tea, the walls lined with elaborately woven carpets. ‘Tea’ it turns out, actually consists of enough food to make the modestly sized table groan under its weight. Towers of bread - they are BIG on bread in Tajikistan - just about every kind of nut, sweet and fruit in existence… and then the goat and rice turn up. The table we sat around was raised just above ground level - much to the delight of all inflexible 6’4” of me as I folded my legs under it with strained origami like precision - with a pit underneath the middle of it where a pot of hot coals resided. Spilling out welcome heat that was trapped by a thick blanket over our legs that doubled as the table cloth.
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#blackandwhite #horse #buzkashi #tajikistan #portrait #blackandwhitephotography

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A quiet moment after the madness of a match. Trying to shoot the riders after a match was like trying to herd cats. Once the match finishes they scatter rapidly back to their trucks and getting hold of them is nearly impossible. You’re back standing in a wild, barren landscape in what was seemingly only minutes before, seething with hundreds of horses and spectators.
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#buzkashi #horse #landscape #phaseonephoto #tajikistan #blackandwhitephotography #blackandwhite

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‘Marengo’ was the name of Napoleon’s horse depicted in the 19th century painting ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’. Watching Buzkashi matches was often like stepping directly back in to those famous battle paintings of the period. A seething morass of fighting players and horses, kicking up clouds of dust and visceral noise. I wanted some of the images from the project to take on the visual cues of those old paintings. Idealised in the middle of what is an otherwise brutal moment.
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#horses #portrait #blackandwhite #landscape #buzkashi #tajikistan #personalproject

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Buzkashi, meaning “goat pulling” in Persian, is the wild, mad as a bag of cats sport of Tajikistan and its neighboring ‘Stans.’ Think polo - but with a headless, eviscerated goat instead of a ball, hundreds of riders, and no formal teams. Rooted in the nomadic cultures of Central Asia and played for hundreds of years, riders, or chapandaz, battle for control of the goat while dodging rivals (and the occasional whip or elbow) The rule book consists of a couple of sentences, with the match often overflowing into the fleeing crowd (something I can testify to first hand) games can last for hours until one rider hauls the goat across a hay-marked goal line in the dirt.
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#buzkashi #tajikistan🇹🇯 #horse #sport #personalproject #blackandwhite #blackwhite #phaseonephoto

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Meet 4 year old Abdulqadir, during a quiet hilltop moment with the Buzkashi match still thundering away in the narrow valley below us. We were setting up our flash equipment and taking portraits of some riders from his group of family and friends. Unprompted, he strolled into our makeshift hilltop studio on his biblically large horse. Made to look even larger by Abdul’s diminutive presence on top of him, feet tantalisingly close to actually reaching its stirrups. Yet with the confidence of a Tajik John Wayne, he turned his horse onto the mark I gestured at and posed without direction. Absolute boss.
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#buzkashi #horse #portrait #blackandwhite #phaseonephoto #profoto #profotoglobal

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