Cassian Edwards
A photographer who has a complex background and is passionate about capturing photographs.
People are odd yet intriguing animals and most of them – at least most of the time – wear their feelings upon their face. Concentration, sadness, joy and anger: facial ‘reactions’ to the instantaneous thought-processes manifesting in the mind.
Take the person at the bus stop on a cold wet day, late for work and waiting alone. It is unlikely that their face will be a bundle of joy, but instead displaying angst about getting to their destination on time and the day of dull office work ahead and that deadline that they have already failed to meet. Or the bar tender who loves his job – you couldn’t stop him talking and joking and smiling and beaming from ear to ear if you tried! Or the grandmother looking after her teenage daughter’s new born child for the day, sullenly staring into the depths of the pram wondering what on earth the future holds for the pair of them, both so tender and both so very young..
You see it’s the faces that I am attracted to, and the minds of which I want ‘to read’ and get inside. But of course faces can change in an instant. And that’s the challenge - to capture those fleeting facial expressions within the miniscule moment of a passing-by photograph, and to have an inroad into those minds for a split second to be able to try and make some sense of it all.
Back in the late ‘80s I studied photography for a few years, firstly on a black and white printing course, and then as a trainee laboratory technician whilst also working on a BTEC national diploma. Unfortunately (or fortunately as some may say) in 1988 a certain musical subcultural revolution swept the youth of the UK, and I must say I did my fair share of dancing late into the night. For a while I gave up photography and studying but then went on to become a qualified letterpress and four-colour lithographic printer which, albeit technically interesting, I found frightfully boring printing page after page after page. So I gave that up too and I went back to college, and then to university where I obtained a B.Sc. degree in Marine and Freshwater Biology, and afterwards a Ph.D. in Coral Reef Ecology. For several years I worked on the reefs in Jamaica, from where my nickname Casper Duppy arose - ‘duppy’ meaning ‘ghost’ in Jamaican patois – and given to me by some fishermen there. But I digress: I started photographing again in 1999 soon after digital cameras made an appearance, having bought a Coolpix 800 and I haven’t really stopped since.
So, to sum up, I suppose one could say that I have a love of the water and what lives within it, but I also have a love of capturing people and presenting the stories that only a photograph with a face can tell. And that is, I guess, what draws me to street photography.
My mate Graham. This is his spot - on the bank looking to the west far across the River Thames and into the light of the falling sun. For many years I fished the river right in front of him; for bream, roach, dace and big Thames thirty pound carp. Until I moved south out of Richmond town and out of London. We've spent countless hours talking about life. He's from Scotland, and has travelled the UK more than I have, walking far and wide, but he's not lived under a roof for decades - and he says he wouldn't even if the offer was there. Most nights he sleeps in a tent in the woods - he must have slept his way through hundreds of tents. Here there and everywhere. He has a very strong accent and regularly I have to tell him I can't understand what it is he is saying, and could he say it again. Often I don't understand if he actually understands what I am saying, so he says the same thing twice, in the same strong accent, that I couldn't understand the first time. And I ask again. He rides a bike, everywhere, albeit he stashes it in the woods if he needs to go to a place where he can't take it. Sometimes he sleeps right here too - that is if the weather is warm and allows him to drift off for the night under the stars without freezing. He sleeps here sometimes in winter too. I've given him bicycle inner tubes, tyres, brake pads, wheels, cables, warm jackets, jumpers, socks and so much more, including money. I moved away from where he 'lives' in 2011, which is near to where I grew up, but every time I go back to this river that I know so well, I still go to search for him. On this day - in November 2023 - I asked if there was anything he needed... if I could buy him something, be it food, clothes, alcohol anything..."Naarr I don't nee a thing", is what he said - I understood that much. I still made sure he had - rather than had not. It's sometimes hard to make out what he says and really means, for often I feel he is up high in the clouds, like the jet planes that fly over every minute on their way to land at Heathrow. But he's so humble, and if he doesn't need it he doesn't ask for it. Yet whenever I return 'home', and go down to walk the tow path along the Ole Father Thames, I always go and look for my old mate Graham. I know that we never get younger, and that time just like the diurnal tide that flows up and down the River never stops. But always when I return home and go to see my river I always go to look for my old mate Graham. And just like the setting sun in the west - the sun that always sets over the River Thames right in front of his favourite spot - I always walk down the river in the hope to see that my friend is still there
