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Many thanks for the kind words, Old Owl. This was the first roll or black and white film I've shot in... well, it must be 10 years... and when it came back from the lab I was immediately mortified and depressed that "oh I can't do this thing at all - I am not fit to be let loose with a real camera" - But then after a while I hit upon the idea of masking the frame down with crudely cut bits of white paper, and then I just thought "why not just go with this absurd level of contrast and messy edges?" - b&w is a vibe, a kind of slap in the face. I do know and love those Japanese photographers - Shomei Tomatsu, Takuma Nakahira, Daidō Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase (do you know his 'Ravens' work?) - though actually I might see this more as a kind of punk record cover from about 1978... Crass maybe... Somehow very fitting to Plymouth, where I grew up in the late '70s, where rows of punks used to sit on the wall outside Virgin Records, sniffing glue and one by one toppling over backwards into the flower beds. "Punk's not dead" ;)