Blacksmith.

I met Phillipp the blacksmith in the small mountain top village of Guarda, Switzerland, during a snowstorm. It was good to get out of the cold and into the warmth of the forge. He had no idea who I was, but very kindly let me film him while he worked, and gave me a short interview afterwards. As you’ll hear on the film, Phillipp was only ever going to be a blacksmith.

I always admire people who instinctively know what they want to do in their lives – for Phillipp, the realisation he was a blacksmith came from spending a day watching one at work at a festival. I can totally understand that: the crafting, the forging of something tangible from different elements. It is magical.

When I was at school, in a careers class, we had to choose who what job we’d like from a pile of different magazines the teacher handed out. Among the glossy pages I found a portrait of a weaver. I remember the image clearly: she was sat, with a mug of tea, the steam caught in the daylight streaming in through the window, elbow resting on the loom beside her. That image, of completeness and satisfaction, burned itself into me. So much so, I didn’t just announce to the class that I wanted to be a weaver, but went home and demand my Dad (a carpenter by trade. His father and generations before him were coopers) make me a small handloom that weekend.

Of course I never wove anything on the loom. It took a while for me to realise it was the photograph I loved. The light, and shadow, the immediacy and intimacy of the moment, caught forever.

But in a way I have become a weaver – of photographs and words, light and shadow. I love making these short films of artisans at work. It’s a vein I started with the films I’ve made for Inntravel, but I see now that they have their roots in the people stories I told for the likes of Oxfam. And of course, I realise, too, that the artisan film I really wish I could make is the one of my Dad, Ken, as he used all his knowhow and tools and spent a Sunday making a handloom for his son.