For Alex Rorison, photographs are physical objects to be played with – not just “pixels on a screen”

Where possible, London-based fashion and still life photographer Alex Rorison always tries to work with images in physical form. He likes to see photographs as objects “rather than pixels on a screen”; the thing that gets the photographer’s creative ideas flowing is this gap between the digital and the physical, and what can happen in between. An image can be transformed into “something entirely new through material manipulation”, he says, if we treat it as a living thing and not a final file. “It’s exciting to me that the process of making an image doesn’t have to end when the shutter is pressed,” he tells us. “When so much of daily life is on a screen, it’s nice to step back and work with your hands.”

As a result of this commitment to experimenting with material interruptions, Alex’s creative process is relatively free-flowing, shifting organically from processes like dark room printing to collaging, and hand-stitched embroidery directly onto his prints – like his recent project for Size and Asics. “It can be a real labour of love: shoot, handprint, scan, retouch, print, embroider, scan (again), retouch (again),” he says, “But I love the labour!” Nothing the photographer shoots is forced into a rigid concept, instead ideas and aesthetics are birthed by the processes his images are weathered and worn through.

All of the photographers work with analogue photography with mixed media techniques as a result of the fact that he finds it quite hard to “sit still and stay in my lane”, he says. “I see something and then I want to try it and push the boundaries of it.” Having an approach led by by this kind of curiosity has made Alex much less precious about the final results of things, as experiments by nature aren’t always meant to work. “I’m certainly not going to like everything I make – I’m probably 100 per cent happy with 30 per cent of my images — but for me it’s important to keep tinkering, testing, evolving and making things just for the joy of making something,” he ends.