Steve reeves
Discipline:
Photography, writer, director
Location:
London
ABOUT:
I am an environmental portrait photographer whose work seeks to reveal the quiet power of presence. Rooted in a documentary tradition, my portraits are made in situ on streets, in homes, workplaces, and care settings and are often accompanied by short, written interviews. These interviews are intended to form a gentle counterpoint to the image, inviting the viewer into a space of learning and understanding as well as looking.
At the heart of my practice is a desire to make visible those whose labour, resilience and humanity have shaped Britain for the better. Much of my work focuses on older people - individuals whose contributions span decades yet whose voices are increasingly lost in a culture that privileges youth, novelty, and digital fluency.
Projects such as ‘Britain Called, We Answered ‘ and ‘Irish Heart, English Home’ engage directly with the legacy of migration, documenting members of the Windrush and Irish communities whose stories are too often folded into abstraction or political rhetoric. These portraits do not attempt to monumentalise but rather to honour the lived experience of those who built the infrastructure - social, cultural, and literal - of contemporary Britain.
In an increasingly right-leaning political and media landscape that frequently dehumanises the other, my work hopes to be a quiet act of resistance: a sustained gaze, a gesture of care, a record of presence. Each portrait offers a moment of recognition, a reminder that the extraordinary is often hidden in plain sight.


WORKS:







