Admission is strictly by invitation only. To receive yours please register and I will send full details. It would be great to see you and enjoy a drink or two!

I would like to invite you to view my latest work which is hung at Cloisters, barristers’ chambers where I have displayed my images twice before. Each time, I have shown a different aspect of the way I work and the twenty-eight shots displayed here were specially created for Cloisters’ conference rooms. Some are large, such as this one which is 2 metres in length.

When Cloisters asked me to create artwork for their chambers I decided to concentrate on their immediate surroundings. Because London is so varied and there is just so much to see, I restricted the area to a radius of 500 metres, with Pump Court being the centre. For some, who make the same journey to work on a daily basis, this seemed an uninspired choice, but to me it provided a wealth of visual possibilities and I relished the chance to create strong graphic images out of what some people see as their ‘boring’ office buildings.

As with so much of what surrounds us, it is easy to mistake the familiar with the mundane and therefore, to view it as unexceptional. However, by taking time to see how light changes; how a reflection can distort and abstract; how a different viewpoint or season can create a new perspective, we can see how rich our immediate surroundings are.

An additional aspect of this show is the contribution that you can make to a very worthwhile cause. 10% of the proceeds are going to the EDDIE QUIST-ARCTON MEMORIAL TRUST. This trust enables a black South African lawyer to work with barristers at Cloisters for three months each year.

Admission is strictly by invitation only. To receive yours please register and I will send full details. It would be great to see you and enjoy a drink or two!

It was early spring and arriving at la Bastide de Moustiers, just as dawn broke, was as memorable as for any early morning location shoot I have experienced. The grounds and the meadows beyond were thick with frost. A dense mist hung like a shroud; so that the mountains which surrounded us went unseen accept for a few feet as it hovered ever so slightly above ground level. The stillness, broken only by the sporadic rasping crow of a cock and the thawing of frost, was full of expectation. It was an expectation that didn’t disappoint and my memory of that morning is as vivid as ever.

I was there to start the photography for Herbes de Provence, a book that I had conceived with Anthony Gardiner. Prior to that morning the book had already had a long and arduous journey. The concept was simple. Take the seven herbs that that go into that little sachet known as Herbes de Provence, find seven restaurants throughout the region together with seven of the most imaginative chefs and get them each to create seven original recipes using one of the herbs. Great idea, but it took seven years from concept to finding a publisher who would take it on!

La Bastide de Moustiers is owned by the celebrated chef Alain Ducasse and is an exquisite country retreat. Compared to other establishments in his empire it is small with just seven bedrooms in the main house. At the time of my visit the chef de cuisine was Vincent Maillard who, in his early twenties, had just earned his first Michelin Star. Even at this early hour Vincent, with three other members of his team, was already in the kitchen prepping for the day ahead. Like the silence of the surrounding countryside the kitchen was a place of serenity punctuated only by the sound of knives being sharpened, vegetables being diced or a pan placed on the hob. Appetising aromas wafted through the air making me salivate at what might be in store for later at lunch and then dinner. To me this was heaven.

My first task was to capture the essence of the kitchen while later I would be shooting the seven specially prepared dishes that concentrated round Sage, which Vincent had created. Like the seasonal vegetables, that are a feature of la Bastide de Moustiers, herbs are grown in the kitchen garden. In keeping with the rest of the grounds the herb garden is beautifully tended and is divided by a series of rose arches that were in full bloom. In June this area of Provence is covered in a blanket of lavender that grows in swathes that stretch over the undulating countryside. Against a deep azure sky the colours create a phenomenally vivid palette. The feature of Provence that I find so attractive is the definite delineation of the seasons, with each one equally dramatic. Even at the beginning of winter the lavender, which has since turned a burnt almond, can look positively golden as it glistens in bright sunshine.

All the kitchen shots were taken as black and white and were deliberately grainy to give an industrious, edgy feel to portray the heat and pressure of the working environment. As I love to cook, I found it was also educational and picked up many a tip that I brought back to my kitchen in London. However, it was when I started to shoot Vincent’s seven recipes that I observed just what a skilled perfectionist he was. One dish involved placing a sage leaf between two pieces of freshly made pasta and then gradually rolling them so that the sage became absorbed into the pasta but retained its identity. When the finished dish was placed in front of the camera I spotted that the pasta had split and whatever my viewpoint I could not disguise it. Pointing this out to Vincent he immediately removed the entire dish and recreated it in full to absolute perfection.

The following year I had a meeting with Alain Ducasse at one of his restaurants in Paris and presented him with an album of the shoot at la Bastide de Moustiers. A few weeks later I received one of his books, weighing an amazing 3.5 kilos, signed with a long and personal message. A volume to treasure indeed!

This shot is available as a limited edition print. There will only be 50 copies. Each one will be signed and numbered by John Freeman and will be accompanied by a certificate of authentication together with a unique hologram on the reverse of the print. The overall paper size measures 483 X 329 mm in this edition. Each print is printed on 100% 308 gsm rag paper and is wood pulp and acid free and has archival permanence.

The cost of each print is £250.00. However, as the edition sells out the price increases i.e. after ten prints are sold the price will be £300.00 for numbers 11 – 20. For numbers 21 – 30 the price will be £375.00 per print. For numbers 31 – 40 the cost will be £475.00 per print. For numbers 41 – 50 the cost will be £650.00 per print. The next available print is 1/50.

I visited Westfield, Stratford City on Tuesday, which is now the biggest shopping centre in Europe. It borders the Olympic site so it also allowed some new views of this hitherto hidden venue.

One of the stores which attracted me, was the Getty Gallery that was showing a selection of archival pictures from in and around London. The prints were beautifully presented, with some dating back 100 years. One shot that really fascinated me had been taken in 1920 at Stamford Bridge and showed Chelsea in action against an unknown team.

It was mounted on the far wall of the gallery and was roughly 1.5 metres in length. The first thing that struck me was how stadia had changed over the last hundred years. The ground itself was completely terraced other than a ramshackle ‘East Stand’ and advertising was conspicuous by its virtual absence. Then there was the fashion of the time, obligatory flat caps and the complete absence of women. I couldn’t see any vendors and the greyness of the sky hung like a shroud over the entire vista. It was a masterpiece as an historical document and sat well with the other images of  the West End, docklands, parks, The Thames, The Blitz and or course, celebrity.

On Thursday a friend said that he was going to see this new ‘consumer paradise’ and did I want to meet him for a coffee, after he had ambled round this vast site. This I did and asked if he had visited the Getty Gallery, which he informed me he hadn’t. As he was a lifetime Chelsea supporter, I thought that showing him the gallery, and in particular that fabulous print of Stamford Bridge, would round of his visit and give him a lasting image to take away, which after all, would cost nothing compared to everything else that was on offer.

I didn’t tell him what I particularly wanted him to see, and we walked to the gallery where I led him to the far wall. Imagine my surprise as a blank, white wall confronted us, where only a couple of nights ago hung this enormous historical print.

Dumbfounded I asked the curator what had happened to the print! She answered in hushed tones almost as if I was referring to a dear departed friend, which in a sense, I was. “We had to remove it as many people complained about it”.

“Complained about it?” I repeated her words in an incredulous tone, because what was so offensive as to give anyone cause for complaint?

“Well we had West Ham supporters come in and say that it was totally offensive that Chelsea should be represented in what after all was their borough” I was speechless as was my friend, who I have never known to be lost for words before!

Coming to my senses I wondered how threatening these ‘supporters’ had been, that they had managed to get a work of art removed purely on the basis of their allegiance to a football club which they felt should be represented and wasn’t. What exactly did they say and what was their attitude that the gallery felt so intimidated that they removed the image? Had they taken to heart their nickname; The Hammers? These questions remained unanswered.

Looking around the gallery, I noticed an early print of The Beatles. Should this be allowed I thought? After all, they are from Liverpool so why didn’t we have a shot of The Stones who are from London? I could probably have found reasons why every shot on show was ‘offensive’. Nearly one hundred years after the shot was taken have we really learnt from history that we learn nothing from history?

The irony of this, is that finding myself in a cathedral of such overt consumerism, where probably the majority of the merchandise is produced or sourced in countries with poor working practices and low wages, no one saw the need to complain, or if they did, it was to little effect and certainly not visible to the eye. Whereas, an important historical image gets removed in the most pusillanimous manner, by an internationally known gallery that should know better!