The moments that sparked a passion for photography
Portrait of Susanne with her maternal great grandparents. Photograph by Toby Shaw at Memorial Studios community photography project, Hastings, East Sussex, September 2022.
Photography and film have been a constant thread throughout my life — through school, college and work - they are media that have shaped how I see the world, how I understand community, and how I make sense of history. Yet it was only in recent years that I truly grasped just how powerful photography archives can be. They are more than collections of images; they are vessels of identity, memory, resistance and belonging. They hold stories that deserve not only to be preserved, but activated, shared and reimagined for future generations.
Where It All Began
I have been a lifelong enthusiast of visual culture, sparked initially by my studies in photography and filmmaking in Dublin. I was first impressed by the work of Molly Dineen, Werner Herzog, Dorothea Lange, Chris Killip and Nan Goldin. They each sparked an early understanding of how documentary photography, film and cultural image-making reveal the social and political textures of our diverse lives. Their images — unflinching and curious — taught me that the camera is one of our most potent tools for empathy.
During my recent master’s degree in Art History and Museum Curation at the University of Sussex that fascination deepened. I immersed myself in the powerful, socially engaged work of Black photographers, including Roy DeCarava, Ingrid Pollard, Carrie Mae Weems, Renée Marie Osubu, Hélène Amouzou, Gordon Parks, Rahim Fortune and Zun Lee. Their storytelling expanded my understanding of how photography can challenge the narratives imposed by dominant cultures, offering instead a space for reclaiming identity, voice and agency.
A Turning Point: Photography, Race and the Archive
One module in particular — Photography, Race and Archive — opened my eyes to the ways in which archives shape our collective understanding of race and representation. I examined how early race eugenicists used photography to dehumanise, and how civil rights thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass seized the same medium to assert dignity, citizenship and cultural pride.
This was my moment of awakening. I realised that archives are far from neutral. They can reproduce harm — or they can empower communities to rewrite their own stories. And that is a choice.
Today, many emerging photographers are using archives not as static repositories but as living, creative spaces to explore and challenge identity, belonging and memory. Their work convinced me that if we fail to protect photographic heritage, we risk losing not just images, but entire lineages of meaning.
The Moment It Became Personal
Around the same time, I encountered the biography of Robert Dudley Edwards, the Irish academic who established the University College Dublin archives. His belief that historical truth depends on access to original materials — that without them, history becomes vulnerable to distortion — resonated deeply with me. It illuminated the moral responsibility that comes with stewardship: archives shape futures as much as they preserve pasts.
Community, Creativity and the Will to Protect What Matters
My hands-on experience at Picnic, a community space for photography in St Leonards, brought all of this into focus. There, I saw how photography opens doors for people — for creativity, critical thinking, self-confidence, and shared exploration. I saw how young people in particular develop sharper visual literacy when given the chance to engage with images critically and playfully.
I also learned how vulnerable these community-led photography projects can be: underfunded, under-recognised, overflowing with potential yet lacking the strategic foundations needed to grow.
Through years of volunteering, fundraising, and supporting cultural and social sector organisations, I began recognising the same patterns: brilliant people doing vital work with very limited resources, trying to sustain cultural assets that hold deep community value.
It was here that my passion sharpened into purpose.
What I Care About — And Why The Loop Exists
My new consultancy focus is my response to everything I have seen, studied, loved and cared about:
I care about…
Democratising access to the arts and cultural heritage
Ensuring creative skills development is accessible to everyone
Protecting social history before it disappears
Platforming hidden narratives — especially those of women, LGBTQI+ communities, ethnic minorities, diasporas and working-class families
Photography archives touch all of these. They are mirrors, memory banks, and maps of our shared human experience. But for them to thrive, they need care, investment, strategy and community collaboration.
Why I Setup The Loop
Through The Loop, I now help developing archives build strong, sustainable foundations through a people-centred, resource-savvy approach. My methodology is grounded in over 25 years of commercial and voluntary sector experience, blending my new academic perspective with collaborative project management approaches such as Design Thinking, Lean principles and Asset-Based Community Development. Ultimately, this is an approach that empowers communities rather than impose structures on them.
I believe in archives that are:
loved, understood, accessible, community-owned, future-ready, culturally relevant.
Because when an archive comes alive, so does the community around it.
Looking Forward
Every archive I work with — whether a photographer’s estate, a grassroots collective or a local cultural organisation — strengthens my belief that photography has the power to connect us across generations, backgrounds and identities. My mission now is simple: to ensure these visual histories are preserved, activated and used to deepen our understanding of one another.
The Loop is not just my consultancy — it’s my contribution to a more equitable, creative and connected world.