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In 2017 I moved to Basel, which made sorting old photographs much easier to fit into a week.

When I am not photographing around Basel, I am usually writing letters. Outside a day job in Basel, this is a hobby, not a business, and nobody tells me what to shoot. More often than not, I scan every negative myself at the kitchen table, most mornings before work, and keep the edits minimal. I am drawn to bad weather and people at work, which is why documentary photography suits me.

Since 2016, most of my documentary work has been shot on slow film, which slows me down in a good way. New work is added slowly, usually after a visit to Basel or a weekend away. Some of my favourite things, like a cheap desk lamp, came from flea markets and were mended on the train into Basel.

There is no grand plan behind any of this, just keeping a notebook in my coat pocket every few weeks. Small, regular habits like putting tools back where they belong and writing everything down have done more for me than any big resolution. Weekends are usually split between the allotment, long walks and whatever is half-finished in a corner of the shed.

Good to know

I started photographing seriously in 2016, after borrowing a neighbour’s Ricoh GR. My work has been shown in a regional photo club exhibition and a café in Basel, most recently during the summer of 2017. Several old sets from 2016 and the years after have been retired from the site but are still in a plan chest.

Every August, out by the coast path, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working. The market in Basel on Friday mornings is where I find cheap jars, string and good conversation. If something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent the last few weekends reading instead of at a desk in Basel. Visiting a new town, I always look for the market and the second-hand bookshop first, just as I did when I moved to Basel.

Most of what ends up here starts at the library in Basel on long autumn evenings. Writing things down has saved me from ordering the wrong size many times, most recently one wet weekend in November. A lot of this would not exist without a neighbour, who patiently answered my questions early in 2023. I picked up an old hand plane back in 2025, and it has been close at hand ever since.

I read A Pattern Language for the first time one Wednesday in August and still go back to it whenever I have a free hour. An old colleague once told me to take a photograph before taking anything apart, and it has served me well ever since. I have a soft spot for cookbooks with notes in the margin and field guides.

I keep a list of seed catalogues I would like to find, and a friend from Basel keeps adding to it. Oddly enough, long train rides out of Basel are where most of this gets written, with a folding table on the seat beside me. Most of my reading happens by the window, a chapter or two at a time, with a box of spare parts close by.

I still carry an old hand plane almost everywhere, a habit picked up from a man at the market. If I am honest, I would rather do one thing happily than five things in a hurry, and years of the occasional bike ride taught me that.