The best cameras I’ve owned cost less than a tenner. Not just because of budget constraints, though the Lomography ethos is explicitly anti-luxury, but because of what an old cheap plastic camera does to the world. Light leaks, unexpected exposures, no screen, and limited film length. The frame you didn’t intend, that turns out to be the one that shows the most. Lomography is a philosophy as much as a format: commit to being present, accept what the camera gives you, trust the accidental, celebrate the light.
That instinct runs through over thirty years of photography the same way it runs through my up-cycling, circuit bending, and live coding. The imperfect tool, used with total commitment.
My film photography practice:
I’m a Lomo-amego and former curator of Lomography Embassy Hull, shooting on out of date 35mm and 120 film, collecting and refurbishing vintage cameras, many of which were sold through Creative & Cultural’s gallery shop or used by the community. I shot under Fujifilm sponsorship, with my street photography included in the Fujiholics ‘Home’ exhibition. I curated PhotoCity London, staged in Paternoster Square in 2017 for Fuji, Camera World and Genesis. I’ve also curated work by many of the world’s most celebrated photographers in many galleries, and learned from every one of them, see my Curation page. I’m an avid collector of artistic work, and my collection of vintage and film cameras also continues to grow, saved from landfill for new adventures.
Music, moving image and stage photography
For over two decades, I documented live music from inside the performance, not just from the pit or the press enclosure, but from the stage. Hundreds of gigs, live BBC sessions, festival main stages. Official BBC photographer at major events, including Leeds Festival, where I co-founded and ran the unsigned stage for seventeen years with a camera in my hand.
I shot music videos for many bands that went on to MTV. I location management for BBC TV documentaries. Taught film production for BBC Learn Xpress. My camera and my DJ kit often occupied the same spaces on tour, sometimes simultaneously.
The photographs from this period are an archive of a music community, unsigned, under-the-radar bands that the BBC Introducing work was simultaneously trying to amplify. The two disciplines were always the same practice. Just different ways to celebrate talent.
Street
Street photography is my personal practice. Analogue where possible. The shot taken in passing, on the way to somewhere else. Whatever is actually here, not what was arranged to be photographed. The people, the street, industry’s remnants, all appeal to me. Moments frozen it time.
Euro Book Trek, forthcoming photo book
In 2025, I drove across 11 countries in Europe, touring my novel Salt & Seeds and meeting creative communities. Of course, I took cameras. The resulting blog writing and photography across France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Austria, Czechia, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, and more, is the raw material for a forthcoming photo book with Grokkist Press.
Writing and photography as one document: the journey, the conversations, the places, the water. Venice, where the bookshop floods regularly, so books are stacked in boats inside. Berlin, where the freedom to express was lost and retaken. Hull, where the people must learn to live with water.
HIP Club
In 2014, I co-founded Hull Independent Photography Club and Gallery, a community photography project teaching people to see, shoot, and exhibit, with participants from age eight upward. It is self-funded and still running.
The same impulse as the music or film workshops in schools: give people the tools, get out of the way. Enable progress and celebrate the process.
Alan Raw 