I was essentially homeless when I took these photos. A friend of a friend needed someone to housesit in Stockwell, South London, while he was in China filming a documentary. Living there after being in North London all my life was like moving to Manchester. I was six months into cleaning myself up and savagely heartbroken. Actually, it wasn’t just heartbreak, it was deeper than that. I had totally lost myself over the previous decade, doing nothing but signing on and going up to the pub. When my girlfriend and I split after eight and a half years, it brought all of the self-abuse and denial I’d experienced during that part of my life into sharp focus. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just feel the pain; you either keep digging the hole or start the climb out, and climbing out is fucking rough. At the time, I didn’t even have a camera. Some bloke I met at a recovery meeting lent me his Nikon D40 and I started shooting. I wandered the empty streets, taking photos between meetings.
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