Jane Bown

My film camera of when I took this up as a proper hobby.

So I had Jane Bown's, uh, A Lifetime of Looking, which is all her portraits.

I'm not even a portrait person, and they're, they're just stunning.

But the one I'm picking of the ones I own is Don McCullin, and it's his sort of whole history of the East End of London, all the war stuff, and then his landscape that he's sort of going through.

I know enough, I know enough about him.

I don't know which of his anthology or books are sort of, uh, the one I'd like to buy.

Jane Bown, even though I don't like cats, she did a whole book on cats on film, which I think would be really funny.

Um, so that would, that, that, that would probably be on the list as a, a little treat book.

But I think creating, and I don't wanna sound cliché, but creating a safe space where people can openly communicate.

People might have heard me say this before, but Jane Bown, a photographer who did over 50 years at "The Observer", used to say that a good portrait is given and not taken.

And I think enabling somebody to give you the portrait you want can only occur through, um, that quality of feel in the space.

Interesting.