See Through Walls: The photography of SJ Pirie

I’ve been taking photographs since I was eleven, when a roll of film for my dad’s old twin-lens reflex taught me the specific pleasure of capturing an image with intent — not just being handed one. The camera didn’t survive being left on a car parcel shelf in the sun, but that feeling never left. Photography stayed with me for decades, developed purely for its own sake alongside a 42-year career in commercial print, learning first-hand how quality is actually achieved, and where cost hides in a supply chain most people never see behind.

A myriad of photographers continue to inspire my approach and form. Photographers Robert Doisneau and Shirley Baker have shown me how much is happening in an ordinary street, if you’re patient enough to wait for it, while the incredible Ansel Adams found a different way of observing nature entirely. The modern-day influences sit at opposite ends of what draws me: Joe Cornish’s dramatic, technically masterful landscapes, and Martin Parr’s unglamorous, observational eye.

Every image starts the same way for me: something catches, and I don’t move on until I know what it is. Usually it’s small, a detail that’s been sitting in plain sight for years, waiting for someone to actually look. I’m not composing a scene; I’m noticing one that was already there.

The prints are made the way I’d want to receive one myself. 50×70cm, portrait only, on 250gsm FSC® certified silk paper, printed with liquid toner pigment for a smooth, velvety finish. I hand-emboss and pack every one personally, here in York, before it goes anywhere.

One size, one price – £37 – because standing behind that consistency matters more to me than offering options nobody asked for. It drops straight into an off-the-shelf frame if you want one, with nothing custom to source.

See Through Walls isn’t a portfolio I update when something photogenic happens. It’s the studio I built so the work has somewhere proper to land. Not boxed in an archive, not scrolled past on a phone, but on a wall, in a room, where it can actually be looked at.

I hope one of these finds a wall in your home. That’s the whole point: to help you see through walls.