It’s really exciting to hear about your contribution to 209 Women, can you give us some insight into your creative process behind your photograph of MP Gill Furniss?
At first I thought about taking a picture that depicted Gill’s life, her background and her passion for Sheffield. For instance, her father was a steel worker and she seems to be passionate about the steel industry. I realised that although this idea could be a good representation of Gill, it would not disclose much about myself. Instead, I thought about what Gill and I had in common and had the idea of using people as the link between us.
I usually create images of people showing different roles of themselves. I love producing scenes and situations in the interplay between reality and fiction. Gill Furniss is a female politician, very engaged with others concerns. She works to protect consumers, and this is something affecting all of us.
I ended up using different characters as the background for the portrait. The initial idea was to place Gill into a crowd; the problem with this was how to define a crowd and decide what characters could best represent it. It’s not possible to represent all types of people within one picture, so I decided to include friends, relatives and people close to Gill and I; people that one could meet on a normal day in Sheffield. This made things so much easier!