One to Watch: Larry Dunstan

He's an affable man, Larry Dunstan: he turns up to the office weighed down with vast books of photography and a big smile on his face. Wade through his work though (there's a lot of it) and it becomes apparent that the laid-back exterior conceals someone much deeper.

Dunstan works in many areas, including portraiture, fashion, editorial and documentary. Most striking are three different serious of images: firstly, a set he refers to as his "cellular Toxicity " pictures, among them a shot of a teenager turned to the side to display a crustily malformed left ear (shown). Then there are his "empty spaces": bleak, beautiful shots of interiors from closed-down hospitals and schools. Capping it all, is a disconcertingly human-looking chicken's foot, coolly observed in black and white. Dunstan's view of the world and what its future may hold, one can only wonder at.

"I was in hospital about five years ago and it really struck me that illness affects everybody" he explains of this obsession with health issues. He prefers such universal themes because, as he explains, touching people on a psychological or emotional level is important to him:. "I want to do work that can affect people - make them think for a few seconds - that's what I push for."

Dunstan first tried his hand at photography as a schoolboy. "But I didn't realise you could have a career in it" he confesses. So it wasn't until he was 25 that he decided to take it up professionally, beginning with a Btec course, then assisting with Click Studios and then photographers Platon and Pierre Winters.

He now works freelance for publications such as I-D, Dazed & Confused and The Observer Magazine. "Commissions give me the money to do the personal stuff" he explains "if I'm not working I spend a lot of time in the library, referencing for future projects. " He confesses to an ongoing interest in history, as well as the future, which in turn inspire much of his personal work.

It's not all doom-laden conspiracy theory or hideous deformity. Elegant portraiture and informal shots of friends and family also feature.... and of course there is the serenity of Dunstan's aforementioned empty spaces. "That's more about yourself, composition and light: it's almost pure photography, those three elements. It's like meditation.


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