Chris at Spinnaker International, Saltash. Photo by Lee Jackson
Chris at Dartmoor Brewery, Plymouth. Photo by Lee Jackson
Chris Steele-Perkins / Plymouth
“I have been photographing England: the people, the culture, the landscape, the ups and the downs, as a central part of my working life. So, to be commissioned to work around a topic in England that I had done little about in the past, manufacturing, in an area (Plymouth) I had spent little time in, was welcome.
I wanted to look at a variety of manufacturing and in the time-frame of 10 days I thought that one day per company, regardless of size, would be a good distribution of effort and each company should be refreshingly different; and this proved to be the case. My approach is fairly simple. I don’t take batteries of lights with me, but I do sometimes use some small flash guns, and generally I don’t interfere too much, though I do ask people to perhaps repeat something they have done, or to move in order to change the dynamic of the picture. While my interest is primarily about people, I photograph the things that interest me on different levels too, including details that I notice – fragments of the visual world that the photographer’s eye teases out of the mass of ‘stuff’ and so elevates it in significance.
The exception where I really do interfere is by making posed, small-group portraits. Factories are collective enterprises, where teams have to work together. I make a few of these group portraits depending on the place and how I feel. They are pictures that are out of context at one level as they are constructed groupings but all still within the wider context of their work-place and, along with the photographs of process and of details, work together to allow some insight into these factories.”
Burts Potato Chips
Spinnaker International
Westaways Sausages
Summerskills Brewery
Dartmoor Brewery
Tavy Ales
Conway Stewart
Vi-Spring
Tideford Organic Foods
Bandvulc Tyres Ltd
Princess Yachts
Steele-Perkins has been working internationally since the early 70s and, since joining Magnum in 1979, he has worked extensively in the developing world with a number of highly acclaimed reportages. His recent book ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND offers his very personal retrospective of work shot in England over the last 40 years.