The crab fishermen of Cromer

Portraits of the artists

A few days ago I was fortunate enough to photograph three great Syrian artists: the novelist Manhal Alsarraj, whose works are banned in her home country; Samih Choukeir, a musician whose music has been played throughout the uprisings; Ali Farzat, the award-winning cartoonist whose hands were broken in August by a gang of masked men soon after he started to target Bahshar Al Assad in his work. It was a pleasure to meet them all. Here's one picture of each...

Manhal Alsarraj

Samih Choukeir

Ali Farzat

Khari Baoli

In Old Delhi, just off Chandni Chowk, lies Khari Baoli market, Asia's largest spice trading centre. It's a fascinating location and one of the busiest places I've ever come across, especially in terms of the sheer amount of human labour one can see every day.

It's wonderful place to spend time with a camera and, perhaps not surprisingly, is home to the best chai wallahs in town. I've been shooting there quite a bit over the past couple of months and think that there might be the bones of a half-decent essay here.

All of this stuff is shot on Tri-X, using an Olympus OM2, with either a 28mm 2.8 or a 50mm 1.4 lens. The film was home developed in Rodinal and the scans are pretty quick and dirty, then tickled up in Lightroom. Not too much, though. I like them a bit gritty and grainy.

Other than a little light cropping in a couple of cases, these images are more or less how they fell out of the camera.

Kashmir