‘Once they’d finished, they just stood there awaiting further instructions. “Oh my God!” I said. “Don’t move!”’
The Cox London foundry create beautiful metal pieces for the luxury interiors market. I had photographed the creative directors before, but for this shoot last year, the start of an ongoing project celebrating the skilled craftspeople in British manufacturing, I wanted to focus on the workers. I was inspired by Cox London’s Instagram feed, where the posts had all of this noise of making and crashing and banging, yet I’ve actually created still and quiet images.
Like a lot of photographers, I was very influenced by Irving Penn. Two projects in particular left their mark: his 1948 Corner Portraits, where he photographed people in front of two backgrounds set up at an angle, and his Small Trades project, from about 1950-51, which focused on working people in New York, Paris and London.