About

Photo: Jonathan Tiedemann

The work

I make films, take photographs, write, and teach, but everything comes back to the story: how we make meaning from memory, place, and the lives of others.

Film

My documentary Bay Ridge Express screened at DOC NYC 2024 — it follows the youngest member of a 70-year-old model railroad club as they fight to save their massive layout before eviction from their Brooklyn basement. A film about community, and what gets lost when the room empties out.

Anamnesis (Part One), an experimental essay film about memory and the death of a childhood friend, won Best Short Documentary at the Chicago Southland Film Festival and received the National Board of Review Student Grant in 2021. It also screened at DOC NYC and the Adirondack Film Festival.

Other films include Thanksgiving, following a family rebuilding after opioid addiction in rural New York, and The Beating of a Loving Heart, shot during New York's Covid lockdown. My play Sailorboy won Best Play at the Midtown Manhattan International Festival in 2016.

Photography

Before film, I spent two decades as a photojournalist. My work has appeared in The Times, Stern, Newsweek, and The Observer. I was runner-up for the Kobal Portrait Award, with work exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London. I have also written for The Independent, Petapixel, and the British Journal of Photography.

Teaching

I teach filmmaking and storytelling at Hunter College and Marymount Manhattan College, and have taught across CUNY including City College and Queensborough Community College. I hold an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, CUNY, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Photojournalism from the University of the Arts, London.

I grew up in England and have been based in New York since the early 2000s.