Stephen Graham in Somers Town

I shot Stephen one early afternoon back in 2019. It was a bright and sunny winters day in Somers Town, a residential chunk of London squished in-between Euston, King’s Cross and Camden. I roamed around the Chalton Street area for at least an hour before Stephen arrived, getting my eye in, tuning into the environment. I’ve shot loads of portraits around there (it’s only round the corner to the Guardian offices) and like any familiar scene, you have to try and look with fresh eyes in order to see things for how they really are, in that specific moment and under that particular light. It was winter but still the midday sun was high. High enough in the sky to make you have to think where the light would hit, how hard it would be, and how steep.

I found a few sheltered spots, out of direct sunlight. These’d be handy for portraits I’d have thought, maybe using a fill, or with some reflected light from surrounding walls and buildings. I went into a local pub. They’d be happy for me to bring Stephen in and shoot him upstairs in their gritty old function space, they told me. But Stephen wasn’t into it when he arrived a short time after, alone and on-foot. So we just borrowed one of their chairs instead as we passed, on our way up the road towards Mornington Crescent. I got a few pics of Stephen on the pub’s chair in the shade, here and there. We walked further up and found ourselves against a high, smooth brick wall that stretched half way down the block, back towards the southern end of Somers Town. This wasn’t one of my pre-planned shooting spots and it was fully exposed to the midday sun, but it worked well as Stephen rested up against the wall, ever-so-slightly backlit but with his face lifted by a pop of silver-reflected flash. Then, in a moment of inspiration from a large-format portrait from the 80s of the Scottish artist Bruce Maclean by photo-genius Alastair Thain, I asked Stephen to turn and face the wall. ‘Go on, let your forehead touch the wall’ I said. I kept him there, probably for slightly longer than either of us found comfortable, and we played with different, precise distances between head and wall. Something about this portrait and moment has always stayed with me – the melancholy in his face, exaggerated by the way his forehead had to drop forward as it moved gently toward the wall. The Guardian

Congratulations Stephen on your BAFTA win 👏👏