About Me

Finding my own way

I was maybe 13 years old when my parents gave me my first chemistry set. I remember growing brilliant blue copper sulphate crystals in my bedroom and dreaming of becoming the next Nobel prize-winning chemist. In the end, I settled for a degree in biochemistry and another in biotechnology followed by a two-year stint manufacturing animal vaccines. Still, I admire the vision and optimism for the future of that early me. Feeling constrained by the unnatural confines of a cleanroom, I decided to backpack around the world for a year. I vividly remember the complete otherworldliness of India from the moment my plane was forced to delay landing due to a pack of stray dogs on the runway. Exotic, mystic, and sometimes just downright smelly, I loved immersing myself in its fascinating cultures and stunning landscapes. India taught me to appreciate the huge diversity of Life and find connection despite all its differences.

I returned to Europe and happened upon a job in the banking sector. After eight years supporting foreign exchange and derivatives trading, including through the financial crisis, I realised that all I had really achieved was to swap a lab coat in a cleanroom for a shirt and tie in a London office block. I wanted to be true to myself but I didn’t even know who I was or what I stood for back then. I remembered back to a school project not long after I got that chemistry set. The science geek in me was particularly keen to tell his classmates about the “greenhouse effect”, as climate change was more commonly known back then. My grandmother, a keen gardener, had given me an appreciation for the natural world and I wanted to protect it.

Fast forward twenty years and I was back in school, this time studying in the evenings for a postgraduate degree in Climate Change Management and actively involved as a Climate Champion at the bank’s global headquarters. In hindsight, I believe that the feeling of total despair at not being able to halt the destruction of tropical rainforests accounted for the long gap of wilful denial about this part of myself. I turned my back on the corporate world the year after graduating and reinvented myself as a photographer documenting climate change. It started out of a need. I was long-term ill and walking around outdoors with a camera was just what the doctor had ordered. I had so much fun exhibiting my work in galleries, cafes and museums. The creative me had finally awoken and had the freedom to express himself. It was so empowering.