This week, my partner, Louise France Smith, had a show opening at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth. Visiting was a trip down memory lane, as I studied there and hard to believe that 2025 marks 20 years since I started my Photography BA. Portsmouth has changed a lot since then, and it’s great to see it thriving in so many ways.

Coincidentally, this weekend also marks the 20th anniversary of Silent Alarm, Bloc Party’s debut album. That record was pivotal for me back then, I was a huge fan of both the album and the band. Embarrassingly, I have a vague memory of waking up on a sleepy Saturday morning and catching them perform on CD:UK, if anyone else remembers that! To my amazement, that performance has been uploaded on to YouTube.

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Back in early 2005, around the same time Silent Alarm was released, I was figuring out my path in photography. I shadowed a local newspaper photographer, which was an eye-opening experience. But it was a gig in London that truly shifted my focus, I spotted a photographer in the pit and immediately thought, how do I do that? When I got home, I started working it out, and before long, I was a music photographer.

By the time I got to university, I already had some experience, but Portsmouth’s music scene, anchored by three great venues, was incredible. I spent so much of my time there watching and photographing gigs, shaping my early career in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. So, without getting too sentimental, here are a couple of my early music photographs of Bloc Party, from back when it all began.

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