Ben Anderson

Where are you from/based now?

I'm from a town called Huddersfield in northern England, I still live here.


What is your background in Photography? What keeps you interested?

I've got no formal training in photography or the visual arts. I bought a cheap DSLR in 2005 on a whim and started to look for 'interesting photos', I suppose a lot of people start like this. I stumbled onto a subject that I found fascinating, Parkour, and ended up having a photo shown in the Tate Modern in London as part of a collective show "How We Are Now". Around that time I started to socialise online with other photographers (via flickr) and realised that my interest mainly lay in portraiture and simply depicting the world around me. A group of friends & I with similar photographic interests formed the Strange.rs collective (http://strange.rs). It's the work of these people, and my wider circle of photographer friends, that keeps me interested.


What equipment do you use?

I mainly use a Mamiya 7, but also use a 4x5 speed graphic and an 8x10 rail camera.


What do you look for when you are out shooting?

Nothing in particular, 'misplaced' things, people in an environment that piques my interest. Mainly just whatever's going on around my every day interests.


How often do you go out shooting?

Nowhere near as often as I should.


Is there a particular photographer, site, set of images or a photo book that you keep coming back to for inspiration?

Hmm, Soth, Renaldi, Epstein, Sultan, Wrighton, all the usual suspects really, but I'm particularly interested in the human connection.


Are you working on a project at the moment?

I've a few that seem to be ever on the boil (or perhaps simmer is a better word?), I'm pretty terrible at deciding when something is done: Corridor, about the place where I live and the people that inhabit it. Offroad, about one of my other hobbies. But mainly I just like to shoot portraits. I'm not really on a planned trajectory, this is never going to be work for me, I do this for my own enjoyment and if others like what I've done then all the better.


Are you planning on exhibiting any work in the near future?

No, but Strange.rs have done a few exhibitions so I'm not desperate to get anything on a gallery wall. I'd far rather send prints to friends and family.

Web
Flickr
Strange.rs