A2 (c. 23"x16") print on: Permajet Gold Silk (£40) Innova Soft-textured matt (£36)
In the flea market, Trastavere, Rome, 1969
Shortly after taking this shot, on my first trip to Rome when still a photography student at Salisbury, I chanced upon a scene that has stuck in my memory ever since: a beggar perched on a small trolley that someone had evidently pulled into position in the middle of the thoroughfare in this famous flea market, and left him there. He had no arms and no legs.
I couldn't take the picture, and I knew in that moment that I was never going to be the next Cartier-Bresson or Larry Burroughs or member of Magnum. In my subsequent career as a lighting cameraman, I was to come across abject poverty time and again, but never got inured to it or felt I was in a position to do something, to help. Like most people born and bred into a rich nation, we regularly contribute to a number of charities now, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the neverending need.