GUEST SPEAKER - Niall McDiarmid, 14th February 2018

Niall was born and raised in a small town in Scotland called Aberfeldy and first became interested in photography from the influence of his grandfather who was a reporter and wrote stories for a local newspaper and sometimes produced photographs for them. As he then grew up, he went on to study engineering at university but eventually went on to work as a reporter in London, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, writing stories and producing photographs. However, he was much more interested in being a photographer over reporting/writing alone, he then studied photojournalism at the London College of Printing in 1993 and has been working as a freelance photographer in London ever since.

Niall states that he's lost the meaning of the word 'Britishness' and the term of being 'British' because it has adapted so much over the last ten years as he's travelled around the UK. He has spent over a decade taking people's portraits all over the streets of the UK. He has a breezy attitude towards taking people's portraits, if he is able to be chatty and confident with them then it allows the person involved to loosen up. He takes them as they come, if one doesn't work out then there's plenty more people to photograph. His captions simply quote where and when the photographs were taken, without attempting to say anything about the people in them or who they are, how old they are etc.
His series Town to Town began in 2011 and will be shown this year (2018) at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol from 31st January - 12th May. His project began with portraits of Londoners but eventually expanded and covered over 200 towns across the UK, capturing the diversity of Britain and exploring the idea of 'Britishness'.