This first post comes from 1990, my second year of photography and the first roll of black and white film I ever shot. The story really starts earlier in the year when I accidentally found myself cameraless in the midst of the Poll Tax riots in London to witness the full force of rioter v police. Seeing cars on fire, rioters destroying scaffolding to use as weapons and fleeing a mounted police charge are all scenes that have remained in my memory but left me kicking myself for missing opportunities through not having a camera. It may be that the images would have been rubbish or they may have got me lynched, but a lesson was learnt. I have rarely ventured far without a camera since. And meant that the images here were taken with a fair disregard for the fact that I was being slightly reckless.

A couple of months later, In the summer of 1990, I was with my family visiting my dad who had just started working in Kuwait. The Iraqis invaded the country on the second day of our trip and I was held under house arrest for several weeks with troops dug in in the grounds of the apartment and on the road outside. On the first day of the invasion I took some photos of the troops from the window of our apartment as they overtook the city. My episode of journalism did not last long - I was spotted and some soldiers bustled into the flat (with AK47s) looking for the camera. I managed to hide it, my family all assisted in persuading them I had been using a small point and shoot and they pulled the film out of this one. I was able to pass the film to a western journalist when we travelled to Baghdad to board mercy flights out of Iraq to Jordan and onto the UK.

Looking back, I could have preserved the negs better (though I do at least still have them and I have not done much cleaning on the scans). The images were not great BUT I did get paid for them (£250) by a newspaper and the foreign office looked them over to see what weapons the Iraqis were sporting. The exposures could have been better (all manual), and focus was questionable on several but it did in essence kick off my photographic career so the images are important for that, if not for their technical acumen. I had been bitten by a bug that developed further during some time travelling after school. I soon went to university and spent much time volunteering on the student newspaper and making money photographing events, which I then spent on travelling and taking more photos. All paving the way for my career.

Needless to say the whole middle eastern conflict has remained of interest, but not enough for me to pursue photo-journalism full time. I did revisit a war zone though when photographing a regiment during the Kosovo war. A story for another blog…