Art sale to fund my freedom work

Support independent truth-telling. Receive a handmade signed photographic print as my thank-you.

Back in March I held a photographic art sale to help fund a Judicial Review challenging a fundamental constitutional issue: that you can be convicted in England, yet the system cannot tell you which legal tribunal exercised jurisdiction over you. If the state can no longer identify the legal object to which judicial acts are attributed, something has gone badly wrong.

The photograph above was sent to me by one of the collectors after she had it professionally framed. Every print was individually produced by me, signed by hand in silver gel pen, and printed on my Epson SureColor P700 using museum-quality pigment inks. The signature is in the bottom-right corner—it doesn’t photograph well, but is immediately apparent in person because of its contrasting texture.

Rather than choosing from a catalogue, each collector simply told me the kind of image they were looking for, and I selected a small number of photographs from my archive for them to choose between. The image shown is of Lindisfarne—Holy Island—off the coast of Northumberland. I hope you get to visit someday; it is a wonderful and special place.

I now have another £3,688.98 costs bill from running a Part 8 claim to clarify the law on court identity. Once again, it drew a blank. The exercise demonstrated that there is, in practice, no functioning route in English law to resolve these upstream constitutional questions. I negotiated to pay the bill in six monthly instalments of £614.83, and paid the first one at the end of June. It is, however, a considerable strain on my finances.

I don’t like doing charity-style fundraisers unless there is a genuine emergency, such as the American court case I was dragged into involuntarily to defend a mother from having her child stolen on a political pretext. I haven’t had the capacity to keep my little art business running as a sideline, so it has largely languished.

That said, another £3,688.98 costs bill, alongside rent, car repairs, IT costs, and the ordinary expenses of life, is putting real pressure on me and my wellbeing. I spend quite a lot travelling to work-related events, and I have a medical trip to London coming up in August. I also need to upgrade the hard drives that hold my photographic archive before they become a problem.

I sometimes wish I could simply go back to doing ordinary commercial work, but that isn’t the vocation life seems to have assigned me.

So instead, I’m offering something that I already create with love and care.

What I am really selling is resistance to tyranny.

The art is simply the conduit.

Here is the offer. Make a donation to support my work, and I’ll send you something in return as a thank-you.

US$25 — Signed postcard (artist’s choice of image)

US$75 — Signed A4 print (artist’s choice of image)

US$125 — Signed A4 print (collector’s choice from a gallery I’ll put together)

US$250 — Signed A3 print (artist’s choice of image)

US$500 — Signed A3 print (collector’s choice from the gallery, plus a personal dedication)

US$1,000+ — A bespoke arrangement to suit your interests. That might mean burrowing through my archive to find exactly the right image, producing A3+ prints (biggest I can do myself), or something else we agree together.

This isn’t an automated e-commerce operation. Every print is made, signed, packed and posted by me, so please allow a little time. The lower-priced options are intended to make owning a signed piece of my work accessible without creating an unmanageable production or cost burden.

The world is rather wild right now, so if events beyond my control disrupt supplies or postage, I ask for your patience.

The whole process is manual — I will email you for your address after you make the donation.

I’d also like to place complete archives of my photojournalism into the hands of more people. That involves buying SSDs, copying large amounts of data, and shipping them. That’s really aimed at sponsors and patrons rather than casual supporters. If that interests you, just hit “Reply” to any Substack email and we can agree a price.

My own work on my own wall at home

And if crypto moons, we all get unexpected tax refunds, or someone finally pays reparations for the damage done under Covid, this offer will simply disappear. Those who turned up when it mattered will be grandfathered in, and will own a signed print from a very particular moment in history.

Seen at Nunnington Hall