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David Graham |
From posh shoe sales to snapping souls on street
Man who helped Royals find footwear becomes photographer
HE once sold shoes to the Queen and Princess Diana, but for the past four months David Graham has been taking portrait photographs of the homeless in the West London Day Centre in Marylebone.
For 30 years, Mr Graham ran the famous Rayne Shoes in Bond Street, supplying posh footwear to the Royals, from slippers to high heels.
“Everything except Wellington boots,” said the 57-year-old, who lives in Maida Vale.
Used to high society life, Mr Graham has become a photographer with a social conscience and is out to force his viewers to take a long, hard look at a life less ordinary.
He said: “I was completely taken aback by how intelligent the homeless people were. There was a chap who wrote complex poetry that was absolutely brilliant. I asked another man what his favourite possession was and he said his books.
“He was an expert on French literature and talked at length with my French assistant about Molière and Baudelaire. I asked him where he kept them and he said he buried them underneath trees in Regent’s Park.”
The towering portraits – one meter by one metre – are on display in the West London Day Centre in Seymour Place until September 7.
Mr Graham said: “I think the photos are very in your face.
“I want my photographs to challenge people to look at things they wouldn’t normally look at. I think there is something about human nature that makes us uncomfortable looking at people.
“We don’t look at homeless people because we think they are going to ask us for money. We wouldn’t look at a Hell’s Angel because they might beat us up. We wouldn’t look at a pretty girl on the Tube in case she might spot you and perhaps worry about that.
“I am the first to admit that when I saw a disabled person coming up the street I might even have crossed the road.”
That all changed for Mr Graham, who lives in Maida Vale, in 2003 when his son was paralysed after diving into a swimming pool. Mr Graham quit his job and took a course in photography at the London College of Communication. He left with an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography and has since written a book about the spinal injury his son suffers from called No Diving.
In 2006, he founded Changing Ideas, a charity helping other good causes use innovative photography to raise awareness.
Mr Graham added: “I met the photographer Marcus Bleasdale, from Human Rights Watch, at my college and he inspired me to start the charity. His photographs had stopped a war in the Congo.
“It shows that not only do photographs tell 1,000 words – they can actually change things for the better.” |
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