The Huguenots' House

Some houses were built for light. In the eighteenth century the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields raised their homes with tall windows and attic workshops so that the loom could work from the first hour of the morning to the last. Nothing has changed the way the light enters. It still falls in long, quiet planes across the panelling, and it still asks to be used.

For one day, six photographers and four models will have the house to ourselves. We will work in small groups, moving from room to room as the light moves: a portrait against the shutters in the morning, a figure on the stairs when the sun crosses the landing, a quieter image in the attic towards the end of the afternoon. There is time to consider a composition, to speak with a model and to try something you had not planned.

The models are the heart of the day. Margot, Manon, Lea, and Joan bring their own presence, their own way of standing in a room and of answering a glance. Our photographs will grow out of that exchange rather than out of a list of poses.

Meet the Model is a shared photographic production. It is neither a course nor a workshop: there is no sequence of lessons and no project to deliver. Bring the images you would like to attempt and the curiosity to discover others.

I will be with you throughout, on set and between sessions. If you would like a short explanation of a light, a technique or a piece of equipment, I will gladly give it and try it with you. This informal help is offered entirely free of charge.

The house is reserved exclusively for our production. Lunch is taken together at the long table in the kitchen and is included in the participation fee; drinks remain at each person's own expense.

The house stands in one of the narrow streets behind Christ Church, Spitalfields, where French Protestant refugees settled at the end of the seventeenth century and built the district on silk. It keeps its original plan: a panelled parlour on the ground floor, two floors of bedrooms with deep window seats, and a weaver's loft under the roof with a wall of glass facing north.

For photographs, this is a house of thresholds. Doors open onto doors, a staircase turns twice between floors, and each window gives a different quality of light: cool and even in the loft, warm and broken by shutters in the lower rooms. The dark paint on the walls absorbs what it does not need and returns a face with unusual softness.

Nothing is built for the day. We work in the rooms as they are, opening a shutter, moving a chair, waiting for the sun to reach the landing. The house does the rest.

Over many years of working as a photographer, and of running both a photographic studio and an equipment-hire service, I came to understand what photographers truly hope to find when they arrive on a set. Not simply more equipment, but the freedom to make an image without being stopped by the absence of the right tool.

This is what London Photographic Workshop places at your disposal: a rare, complete photographic production, brought together in one place and made available to you for the duration of the event. It is the kind of equipment most photographers encounter only in fragments, over many years, and which would cost a considerable sum to hire for a production like this.

You will be able to work with HASSELBLAD X2D II cameras and a selection of HASSELBLAD lenses; SUNBOUNCE natural-light systems, including reflectors, screens, Sun-Swatter and Sun-Cage; PROFOTO, BRONCOLOR and BOWENS studio flash; professional battery-powered PROFOTO flash, with a complete selection of modifiers; LEE Filters and professional matte boxes; MANFROTTO photographic tripods; and MATTHEWS grip equipment.

This is not equipment assembled for display. It is a working set of serious tools: the cameras, light, modifiers and support systems that allow an idea to become a photograph when the moment arrives.

Respect is part of the photographic language, not an administrative footnote. All models and participants must be eighteen or older. The models determine their individual nudity and posing boundaries. Consent is specific, ongoing and may be withdrawn at any time. No participant may touch a model without explicit permission. No phones, spectators or behind-the-scenes recording on closed sets.

Images may not be published, exhibited, sold or submitted to competitions outside the agreed model-release terms. No generative-AI training or synthetic alteration of a model’s body or identity. A private changing and resting area must always be available. Models receive proper breaks, meals, accommodation and transport support.

Alcohol is served only after photography has finished for the day. Before each session, the artistic director holds a short consent check-in covering wardrobe, nudity level, location, participating photographers and intended images.