I first met Joe in 2007 on a hot Sunday
morning in Hoxton square, right outside my studio. 

I was lying in the sun trying to look cool amongst the fashionable
twenty-somethings when I saw an elderly man talking to people at random. He wore an old brown suit, thick glasses and held a plastic bag stiffly at his side. He looked so out of place amidst the neon youth that I wanted to photograph him immediately.

My intentions were selfish. I thought he was amusing. I thought he might be drunk. Homeless perhaps. What a great subject! I asked if I could take his picture. He said yes and chatted at me, I didn’t listen ...where is the light I thought, what would be a good background?

I soon found out that Joe was not a drunk. And nor was he homeless. In fact THIS was his home. Hoxton. Unlike nearly everyone else in the square, he had lived in and around the neigbourhood all his life - for 81 and half years to be precise. If anyone belonged here, he did.

Over the following months I photographed Joe many times in and around the area as well as in the studio. We became good friends. My intention was to make a worthy project: to hear the views of a neglected minority and to chart the history of the area in both words and pictures.  How dull. Luckily, Joe failed to indulge me.  What he actually wanted to talk about was old movies, mixed marriages and Johnny Depp… and occasionally what Hoxton was like many, many years ago.

So what has Joe taught me?

That the Germans used to make the best films, that his sinuses are very bad indeed and that I am wonderfully wrong about many things.

...oh, and that he is quite possibly one of the sweetest
people I have ever met. Thanks Joe.