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Steve Palmer
I'm a 51-year-old amateur photographer living and working in Cheshire, photographing this and that. I started my photographic journey when I was a teenager, had a twenty-year gap and now I'm having a second go.
Michéla Griffith
In 2012 I paused by my local river and everything changed. I’ve moved away from what many expect photographs to be: my images deconstruct the literal and reimagine the subjective, reflecting the curiosity that water has inspired in my practice. Water has been my conduit: it has sharpened my vision, given me permission to experiment and continues to introduce me to new ways of seeing.
Hopefully, we’ll remember 2018 for the extended, and for many of us, the welcome spell of hot and dry weather that we had – ‘summer’ isn’t always something we can rely on here – and not for other things that have been dominating the headlines. The year has seen aptly titled new project work – ‘Hothouse’ – from Cheshire based Steve Palmer, a proliferation of image making matched only perhaps by the rate of growth of the plants in the water lily house at Kew. We catch up with Steve to find out more about this, and what he gets up to on his home turf.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up and what your early interests were?
I grew up in a small town in east Cheshire, with the countryside on our doorstep and the city of Manchester a short train ride away. As a young kid, most of my time was spent playing outdoors, getting all the usual cuts, bruises and nettle stings. My Dad was a keen birdwatcher, so weekends would be spent out in the countryside, binoculars in hand, searching for birds and animals. The highlight was seeing a migrating Osprey hunting for fish at Chelford sand quarries in 1975, a huge rarity at the time. From these walks, my love of the natural world grew and many happy days were spent walking in the countryside. I also had a love of music and had a short and unsuccessful stint making a terrible noise while at school. I think the world of music had a lucky escape!