Digital Photograph

I photographed my subject Chester, an old friend, in the wooded area of Clapham Common on a balmy August day in summer 2016. This photograph is somewhat inspired by Wolfgang Tillmans’s Anders behind leaves (2010), which I went to see the following year as part of his first exhibition at Tate Modern. However, whereas Tillmans’s glimpse of a nymph-like figure is hedonistic and catches sight of the elusive freedom that summer promises, my portrait has the subject hiding in the shade of the leaves – a sombre and self-conscious depiction of summertime sadness.

@jonnyclowes