I’m fascinated by the places we live and how complex and strange our relationship to our everyday environment actually is. And of course trying to figure out how to get at some of these things through photographs…

I’m interested in the world as felt experience, which might not always be best described with the written or spoken word. I wouldn’t say it’s so much to find where words fail – because language is a universe unto itself – but to find where a parallel expression can occur.

These young girls are Caldarari gypsies, who regularly become engaged and married while very young. They have grown up in the same community and are best friends. Evaʻs and Mariaʻs parents have already arranged the union to the sonʻs of Families from the same Community, when both where very little.

I think for us, we feel that photography is an object to be played with. This is not to say that we don’t take our work seriously. It should be something that has the capacity to make people feel scared, happy, confused. To evoke any sense of emotion either positive or negative for me is a success.

I ventured towards the edge of the town and came across a long stretch of unfinished highway that overlooked an expanse of empty fields alongside a lake and an old ferris wheel. It is a place where the locals spent parts of their day, from performing morning exercises and enjoying family picnics, to groups of friends drinking at dusk and meetings between teenager lovers.

Whilst there seems to me to be an abundance of women studying photography, it appears the majority leave education and take on administrational, organisational, or nurturing roles within the visual arts.

The fact that you can’t actually see anything inside the caves is very evocative, what you take inside with you are the first impressions as you enter. Odd clusters and stacks of mined rocks and dusty old wooden frames are littered with huge pieces of rock that have fallen from above. The light disappears and the transition completely grips you.

When you find out you’re going to lose someone you love you don’t know what the story is, so you really can’t plan how to tell it. But slowly I began to see that what my photos revealed, as well as what they didn’t, evoked our journey quite honestly.

Presenting images of deserted ‘English’ streets, that on closer inspection allow the viewer to come to the realisation that this is in fact China, not England, has allowed me to challenge our cultural stereotypes of what modern day China looks like.

Hackney was a fascinating place in the 1980s; a bit old fashioned but full of a wonderful mixture of people who seemed to get on very well with each other. The street vibe was very positive, unlike any other parts of London. It was the perfect place to photograph if you were interested in social documentary.

Although I would probably fit the best under the label ‘atheist’, I am very much fascinated by the occult aspects of our existence, and death is definitely one of them. We can never fully grasp it and when we finally know it is already unsubstantial. I am not really interested in after-life or reincarnation but in death as a non-being; as a bi-product of life; and especially in its totality in so far as the cognitive functions are considered.

With this project I want to see what is left from an era. The image of the Reeperbahn, the famous red light district of Hamburg, is known all over the world and had its “golden times” in the 60ies, 70ies and 80ies.

China is changing so fast that I’ve the impression that Chinese people are, in a daily basis, watching their environment transform but at the same time they are caught in the middle of this transformation with not much to do but sit back and watch.

I am interested in that border between what makes something an Internal or External space. Specifically I am concentrating on artificial spaces – contrived by art rather than by nature.

I ended up leaning over fences, looking into people’s back yards, in search of flowers. There’s an element of unexpected finds, small details I don’t see until I get the final picture back.

I tend to get obsessed with a particular site and then explore it in different ways. I then concentrate on a particular approach, adapting the projects parameters as I define more specifically what my intentions are with the work. It’s quite an organic methodology.

All these people gather together, each having spent huge amounts of time and effort creating this bizarre and beautiful vehicle, and then smash it up; destroy their creation.

In one way or another, almost all my work explores an idea of landscape, a political landscape if you want, where the remains of what had bright and shine, the allure of progress, of that fakeness, is the main subject. The objects in my photographs are artificial archaeological remains made by what appears to be an equally artificial modernising project.

I wanted to create images which promised to give you some information but actually relayed nothing.

Like many of the places in the north of England which were once rich industrial towns, Staffordshire has quite a scarred landscape. There hasn’t been much investment and so what you are left with are random bits of identity which don’t conform to one cultural type.

I suppose I am documenting the changes and downfall of small farms and of the loss of sense of community. It is sad when you think what globalization and intensive farming has done to these small farming areas but at the same time change is a constant within civilisation and farming.

Looking at my work I think there is a consistent visual viewpoint of contradiction and juxtaposition. I don’t know if you see it but certainly when I’m out there I feel it.

I will always remember being told by the then Chairman at Tate, who a contact of mine had very kindly set me up to meet when I was young and relatively green, that “getting a job in the art world is like hitting your head against a brick wall until a brick falls off”.

The Croatian military moved into this area in 1995, and over the course of two or three days about 200, 000 people were displaced from Croatia. That was the largest single displacement of people in Europe since World War Two.

Berlusconi made a pact with Libya to stop illegal immigrants coming to Italy on boats. People coming from Egypt used to cross from Libya to Italy but now have to make the trip from Alexandria or Rashid, in Eygpt. The trip, which used to take a day, now takes five.

What’s so special and unique about Seba’s work is how multi-layered it is; there are so many ways to enjoy and appreciate his photographs. Also there is so much of Seba in his work, which in turn leads one into the idea that his process is so important to the work; it’s often like a performance.

Higher Lands is about the experiences of young people growing up in Kingussie, in the highlands of Scotland. I wanted to look at the differences and similarities between their lives and my upbringing in Birmingham.