Keswick photographer Tim Fisher recognised in the Portrait of Britain Award 2021

The latest success in the photographic portraiture of Tim Fisher, of the town's Northern Lights Gallery, comes via an image taken at the annual Appleby Horse Fair in the summer of 2021.

Last year, Tim was the only photographer to have two of his images exhibited nationally through the JCDecaux advertising hoardings around the country and also printed in the annual Portrait of Britain book published by Hoxton Mini Print.

This year, Tim’s portrait of Josie, a young Irish Traveller girl photographed between several modern caravans, was selected as one of two hundred shortlisted images to be featured in the PoB book, but failed to make it through to the final 100 which get to be printed by JCDecaux and exhibited nationally.

But the listing still means that on average Tim has had one of his portraits selected in each of the competition’s years that PoB has been running since 2015.

Tim said: “Annually, you get to submit a maximum of 10 images per submission; images taken over the preceding 12 months. Since I attended the Appleby Horse Fair for four days each year, I do with a view to capturing some portraiture for competitions such as this, but also I have a longer term project in mind which will culminate one day in a published larger body of AHFair work.

Photographer and gallery owner Tim Fisher from the Northern Lights Gallery in Keswick. Picture: Stuart Walker.

"Each day I take along a different lighting assistant, the aim is to come away with several defining portraits, so having only one single image selected is a little disappointing.

“Whilst selecting out my 10 images, 'Josie' was the final image that I thought would be suitable, which to my mind it was not my strongest portrait, indeed, I considered it my weakest shot."

But he added: "Since these competitions are annual, you must take time to study the likes of the PoB, Sony’s Photographic Awards, PX3, LensCulture and the hugely important Taylor Wessing/NPG Award to understand the underlying photographic zeitgeist, what it is that the overarching companies are hoping to see, and in this case, what the British Journal of Photography and JCDecaux are looking for."

Because Tim is employed full-time in his own Keswick art gallery, which does not represent any portraiture, these bodies of photographic work have to be conducted in his spare time. He's always on the lookout for interesting characters or situations which could lead themselves to either photographic projects or indeed, single images.

Of his image, he said: “Looking back at the events of the last two years, it’s easy to see nothing but struggle for Great Britain. But look closer. Because in the cracks, there is beauty. There is the strength of our communities; the resilience of our health service, and the solidarity of our citizens."