Abbas Holcroft

Light is Abbas Holcroft’s medium of choice, a discovery made after walking into his father's darkroom at the end of the garden when he was 11, set him down this path and self-taught rudiments from camera to darkroom skills. 

A gap year in East Africa provided his 1st real challenge when arriving in Nairobi with some 200 films ready to be exposed, it has been his passion for witnessing something powerful/shocking / beautiful that has always guided him and helped to define this emerging artist. 

He soon discovered it had an almost magical influence allowing a very personal and intimate story to be reflected. After studying at Napier University (Photography film & Imaging) under the tutelage of Robin Gillanders Abbas began a personal project that took him to Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Documenting cultural stories or the human struggle was his primary interest, during this period he viewed photography as a tool for change, Change by light that could help to bring awareness and an understanding, that he hopes would bring balance.

Now Abbas is concerned with what he describes as a hunt for light, a process of discovering a scene and then experiencing it, and that experience than becoming his obsession. More often than not he finds himself returning to the same scene and at different times of the year to time the light right. 

Landscape photography has become his primary focus in recent years with his interest now is witnessing the world and our natural habitat and how we together can convey and engage ourselves in this story.

His techniques span both stills and moving image and uses aerial photography and video to showcase spectacular viewpoints of our everyday which can sometimes be overlooked. Long exposures have become more essential to him to show our urban and landscapes absent of any human influence or abstractions, that complicate a scene.