The people I’ve met through photography have transformed the way I see the world.

Introduction

For Steve Reeves, a portrait is a combination of things seen and things heard. Taking a photograph becomes an opportunity to start a conversation – providing a listening ear for an individual who has caught his eye. Caught, not by the extroverts who seek attention, but people going about their business with a quiet dignity, self-possessed. Each has a story to recount, just waiting to be heard. Reeves is drawn to older members of the community, those with a life lived. Eventful, however ordinary. For they are the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers – mid-century children born to the decades of deprivation and opportunity as Britain recovered from economic depression and war to embrace the social innovations of a welfare state and the swinging sixties. Times of change but, looking back from the present, still so different from the world we know today.

One of the biggest social changes of that post-war period was the emergence of a distinct youth culture that carved out a territory between childhood and the conventions of being an adult. Energetic and unfettered by the past, it enthralled the West not least because it coincided with the burgeoning of consumerism. This belief that excessive consumption was good for the economy fed on the rapidly changing fashions of the nascent youth culture. Meanwhile, improvements in public health and nutrition saw the average life span extend by more than a decade. Old age has become a significant phase in life. The perspective of the elderly reaches back over a longer arc of time, a period itself characterised by accelerating change. But, with so much to share, who will pay them attention when all eyes are on the young?

Steve Reeves for one. His images and conversations illuminate the lives of older people in his culturally diverse South London neighbourhood. In doing so, they shed light on the extraordinary richness of real-life, if only one takes the time to stop, look, listen. Working independently or in collaboration with non-profit community organisations, his continuing concern is with the life of the community and the importance of inclusivity, tolerance, and empathy.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

What first drew you to photography?

I had no interest in photography until my wife bought me a Fuji X100F six years ago. It’s a small camera, so I began carrying it with me wherever I went. Previously, I’d remain in my own little bubble as I rushed from A to B. But the act of carrying a camera made me slow down and look at the world around me in a way that I had never done before. I took candid shots and posted them on Instagram.

One day, I saw a patient standing by the entrance of a hospital in a dressing gown and smoking a cigarette while attached to an oxygen tank. The smoke billowed around the tube that went into her nose. I saw the irony and took a shot. She spotted me and called me over. Her name was Hannah, and she was a very friendly thirty-five-year-old mother of two. She told me that she had an incurable brain disease and had three months to live. Whether she smoked a million cigarettes or ran a hundred marathons, it made no difference – she was terminal.

We had a pleasant chat and a few laughs. Hannah asked if I’d take a shot of her and her mate. When I got home, I looked at this shot, which was just a snap, alongside the candid one of her smoking, which I preferred; but now that I knew Hannah, it felt disrespectful. Neither image captured what I got from our conversation. So, I wrote a bit about Hannah to go with the photo.

I found this satisfying because I liked how the words and image combined to express my experience of the encounter with Hannah. Increasingly, I found myself talking to and writing about people that I met on the streets.

How do you select who to photograph?

Perhaps it’s because I’ve never really felt that comfortable in my own skin (I’m a very tall and awkward person), but certain people seem to have a quiet presence. I see this more in older people – people like Michael. Their whole focus is on the moment. It’s a kind of stoicism, and it makes me want to photograph them. My work is very British, which I think gives it personality.

[Left] Michael was trained as a tailor at the Artane Industrial School in Dublin. He never learnt to drive – the middle picture, sitting with a friend in a fake car, was taken at a photo studio on Blackpool Pier.

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Michael insists on doing his own shopping’ 2022 from the series ‘Michael, My 100-Year-Old Friend’

Tell me about Michael…

I met him at a bus stop when he was a mere ninety-seven. He may have been a frail old man with a shopping trolley, but he had that sense of substance, timelessness, about him. He was wearing a smart overcoat and shiny brogues, and I remarked that he looked well-dressed for a man on his way to the shops.

During our conversation, Michael told me that he was born in Dublin, that his mum died when he was six and that he and his brother Paddy went to an orphanage after their dad deserted them. Michael had worked as a tailor for most of his life, making uniforms for the military.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Michael’s Birthday’ 2022 from the series ‘Michael, My 100-Year-Old Friend’

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Michael in Noodle Cafe, Balham.’ 2023 from the series ‘Michael, My 100-Year-Old Friend’

I always offer to give people prints of the photos I take as a way of saying thank you and he was happy to give me his address. When I visited his flat with the print, I was appalled by the conditions in which he was living. His landlord was clearly negligent, and despite Michael’s best efforts, he was living a miserable life in squalor. This began our ongoing friendship and, aside from documenting his life, I have become Michael’s primary carer and advocate. I never intended this to happen – it has just occurred naturally over the past three years.

He is now a hundred, virtually blind, deaf, and has dementia. Yet, when I visit and he is sitting in his armchair wearing nothing but his pants, he still has that dignified presence that made me want to photograph him in the first place. He has a resilience and an inbuilt determination to simply carry on living that I just cannot comprehend.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Flower (Isabella)’ 2022 from the series ‘Britain Called and We Answered’
At 60, Flower adopted her great-nephew when he was just 36 weeks old. He’s now 24, has a sports degree, and works as a manager at a local leisure centre.

[Centre] © Steve Reeves ‘Henry’ 2022 from the series ‘Britain Called and We Answered’
“I was born in the gutter, and I lay in the gutter smiling, waiting for the water to take me to the big sea.”

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Carmen and Keith’ 2025 from the series ‘Britain Called and We Answered’
Over time, Carmen and Keith moved around Balham. She remembers the signs in windows: “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs”.

How did the series ‘Britain Called and We Answered’ begin?

I was walking around the Tooting market when I saw a West Indian woman sweeping her small shop. Not only was there something about the way she stood with the broom that made me want to photograph her, but I also loved her hand-painted shop. It had clearly been there for decades amongst the trendy new cafes and juice bars.

This was Gloria, and it turned out that she had had quite an eventful life since she came over from Jamaica when she was just seventeen. I asked Gloria what had brought her to England, and she said it was because of the advertisements in The Gleaner, a Jamaican newspaper… She was part of the Windrush Generation.

Can you just set the Windrush Generation in context…

After the war, there were labour shortages in the UK that led the government to advertise around the British Commonwealth for people to come and work in the motherland. People from the Caribbean answered the call and came to work as nurses in the newly formed National Health Service, to drive trains and buses, to be postmen, builders, carpenters. They helped rebuild the country, and their arrival contributed to one of the largest economic booms in British history. The first group arrived in 1948 aboard HMT Empire Windrush, from which the generation of Caribbean immigrants of the next couple of decades takes its name.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Gloria in her shop. (Gloria’s permanently closed in 2021 after Gloria passed away)’
from the series ‘Britain Called and We Answered’ [inset] Gloria (on the right) modelling for album art.

[Right] © Steve Reeves – images from ‘Britain Called and We Answered’
were displayed across South London as part of the Windrush 75 commemoration.

What had life been like for Gloria after she arrived?

She’d worked in Wandsworth Prison during the riots, worked in Harrods department store when it was bombed by the IRA, and was briefly a model. She told me, “If you are livin’ in England, you are livin’ good”. This was around the time of Brexit, when there was so much right-wing propaganda being pushed by the press (there still is). Immigration was a hot topic, and the media were painting a picture of immigrants being a burden, here to abuse the benefits system and, worse still, to undermine everything that Britain stood for. The result was a growing climate of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Yet, there I was listening to a living, breathing older working-class West Indian woman – who had worked and paid her taxes her entire life – speak so lovingly about Britain. The fact is this otherness created by the media just doesn’t exist. The conversations I have had while photographing have shown me that we all share more or less the same values. We want to work, be safe, raise a family, and avoid harming anyone along the way.

Thanks to Gloria, I began seeking out other Windrush elders. Their stories of resilience, often in the face of adversity, complement the overarching themes of my work. So far, I have conducted around fifty interviews and hope to turn the project into a book one day.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Roy, manager of Ads-One Ltd hardware on Streatham Hill, South London (permanently closed in 2023)’ 2020 from the series ‘Behind the Counter’

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Abdul, owner of Halal Butchers on Deptford High Street’ 2021 from the series ‘Behind the Counter’

You developed the theme of small local shops in your series ‘Behind the Counter’…

When I started this project, it was around the time of the Covid pandemic. Seeing the eerily deserted streets and shuttered shops felt as though the high street was on the brink of extinction. But my perspective has shifted since then. New businesses have opened. Ironically, the big stores that once put the smaller ones out of business have themselves been flattened because the land they sat on became more valuable than the business itself. In their place, small independent bakers, greengrocers, and hardware shops have returned with their cooler signage and steeper prices. Shopping habits change, but the basic human need for face-to-face interaction remains.

I’m still most drawn to the older shops. They’re just so photogenic but, more importantly, it’s the owners and their stories that matter most. Nostalgia plays a part, but I think it’s also about documenting the quiet dignity of someone who has dedicated their entire life to just one thing – serving their customers. I couldn’t imagine living my life that way, but I admire and respect that they have.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘K.C. Patel opened Little India gift shop in Tooting in 1973’ 2019 from the series ‘Behind the Counter’

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Bob, owner of F. Cooke pie and eel shop in Broadway Market, East London (permanently closed in 2022)’ 2018 from the series ‘Behind the Counter’

To illustrate this, can you tell me about one of the shopkeepers you have photographed.

This is KC Patel [above left]. He came to Britain from Gujarat, India, in 1968 and worked as a postman before opening Little India giftshop in 1973. He loves where he lives, and he knows most of his neighbours.

I visited during Diwali, and one of his daughters, who works for a large American investment firm, had taken time off work to help her dad in the shop. KC’s daughters, both university graduates with professional jobs, often help their father in the store, especially since KC’s wife of sixty-six years, Meena, who always worked by his side, died two years ago.

KC told me that some of the kids who once came into the store now come in as parents, bringing their own children. When I asked if he had any plans to retire, he smiled gently and said, “I will work here as long as I am physically able.” It reminded me of Napoleon’s description of England is a nation of shopkeepers. KC exemplifies that phrase in the best possible way. He’s someone whose identity is bound up in his shop, not just as a business but as the centre of his life.

To me, his story says everything I want to convey in my work. He arrived with nothing, worked hard, and built something for himself, his family, and the neighbourhood. There’s loss in his story – of a beloved wife, a changing neighbourhood – but also warmth and optimism.

Finally, tell me about ‘Before We Were Proud’. How did this begin?

I was out walking my dog when I noticed an old man sweeping his front garden. He told me his name was Gerald Moon. I took a few snaps, and we had a conversation. Gerald turned out to be an articulate and funny guy who told me about his life as a young gay man in London in the early sixties. We agreed that I would return to take a more considered portrait and conduct a more detailed interview. But, when I knocked on his door a week or so later, there was no answer. He had passed away just a couple of days after I met him.

I wrote up what I could about our conversation. The world had changed so much in Gerald’s lifetime. Of course, young members of the LGBTQ community still endure prejudice, but back in Gerald’s time, there was not only the risk of physical and verbal abuse, but arrest and imprisonment. It got me thinking about all the other older members of the LGBTQ community who must have had similar experiences to Gerald.

Since then, I have photographed and interviewed fifteen people whose stories have all been moving and, at times, quite shocking. The injustices and mistreatment that they had to endure purely because of their sexuality are a dark part of British history. But there were also the more personal feelings of loneliness, the struggles with shame and isolation. These were things that I felt compelled to document.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Hi Ching’ 2025 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
Hi rejects labels – gay, straight, bi … to him, identity is about essence, not categories. “We are all tiny people in the grand universe. Why divide ourselves further?”

[Centre] © Steve Reeves ‘Vito Ward’ 2024 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
Vito joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service in 1961. After ten years she was a Petty Offer due to be promoted. Instead, she was charged with being homosexual and lost everything.

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Lee’ 2025 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
He will never forget the feeling of waking up from the anaesthetic. There was a lot of pain but, as he looked around, he saw that he was in the male ward and thought, “At last, this is where I’m meant to be.”

Who are the people in the photographs and how did they respond to being photographed?

It wasn’t easy. A common response was, “There’s nothing special about me – I’ve never done anything important”, or “We’ve just been together forever, who’d be interested in an old couple like us?” But, of course, these were exactly the kind of people I was looking for… I still am.

There’s a media-driven stereotype that the LGBTQ community is loud, flamboyant, and constantly pushing boundaries. While that image represents part of the truth, it also obscures the lives of the majority who have lived quietly, faithfully, and often invisibly in long-term relationships or solitary lives. These gentle, so-called ‘ordinary’ stories are, to me, the most extraordinary.

For example, I loved interviewing Peter and David [below right]. David told me they have been a couple for over thirty years. To which Peter added “We may have met in a sleazy leather bar, but we have so much in common. We both love gardening, classical music, and theatre, especially the works of Stephen Sondheim. We’re so compatible. Neither of us was looking for love. The relationship just developed beautifully. And we’re very happy together.” It’s a simple story of two people finding each other and falling in love.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Stephen Temple’ 2024 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
Stephen remembers being at a disco and seeing a boy dancing. He looked so free, relaxed, and confident – it was captivating. Stephen was desperate to talk to him but felt too inhibited… and went home feeling disappointed.

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘Peter and David’ 2025 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
“We may have met in a sleazy leather bar, but we have so much in common. We both love gardening, classical music, and theatre… We’re so compatible.”

In a world obsessed with youth and celebrity, what draws you to photograph older ordinary people?

It’s simply how interesting they are. I’m always surprised at how often they will deliver a perfectly polished story full of humour and drama. It feels like they have just been waiting for someone like me to come along so they can share it.

I remember editing a portrait of Angela on my computer. She was 109 when I photographed her. I zoomed in to retouch a tiny imperfection, and suddenly it dawned upon me that I was staring into eyes that had seen the First World War. She was born in France and remembered queuing for potatoes as a little girl and watching wounded soldiers from the trenches being carried into the hospital. The sheer span of history those eyes had witnessed felt overwhelming.

The resilience of some of the older people that I’ve had the privilege to photograph never ceases to amaze me. In these troubled times, it’s reassuring to hear the stories of living, breathing veterans of previous troubled times.

[Left] © Steve Reeves ‘Angela Hutor at 109’ 2023 from the series ‘Still Buoyant Are Her Golden Wings’
One of Angela’s earliest memories is of WWI. She remembers queuing for potatoes and seeing all the wounded soldiers on stretchers, waiting to be taken for rehabilitation.

[Right] © Steve Reeves ‘James Carrington’ 2023 from the series ‘Before We Were Proud’
“When you hit your seventies, the edit button falls off, and you stop caring what people think.”

How would you describe the philosophy that underpins your photographic work?

I want my work to be positive. Before I began this photographic journey, I was quite a cynical person. However, the people I’ve met through photography have transformed the way I see the world. Contrary to the stereotype of older generations being conservative, I’ve found many to be open-minded and liberal. Some lived through the Second World War, all knew rationing and poverty, and perhaps because of that, many have a live-and-let-live attitude to life.

But I’ve come to understand that there’s no such thing as objective history. Every memory and recollection is coloured by personal perspective. The people I photograph share their stories because they feel they have something to say. Naturally, they might romanticise the past, exaggerate some parts, and downplay others – it’s human nature. Then I come along and edit their words. So, my choices also influence the narrative.

In making these portraits over the years, what have you learned about yourself?

Photographing and getting to know older people has brought me into frequent contact with death. I’ve gradually become more at ease with this, less fearful. One-hundred-year-old Michael was raised a Catholic, but after suffering violence at the hands of priests as a small boy, he turned away from all religion. When I ask if he’s afraid of dying, he simply says, “Nature replenishes itself”. It’s just the natural way of things.

Photography has given my life renewed purpose, but it’s also shown me life’s fragility. I’m no preacher. I just want to share what I’ve learned: that ordinary lives hold extraordinary humanity, and that our shared values run deeper than whatever divides us.

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While it is not possible, in this article, to include the extended texts that accompany many of Steve Reeves’ portraits, you can read them on his website here.

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Photo: Lily Reeves

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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