In conversation with Portrait of Britain winner and Fashion Photography graduate Logan Davies

Earlier this year, 2022 Fashion Photography BA(Hons) graduate Logan Davies was announced as a winner of the Portrait of Britain Award. We caught up with them to talk about their award-winning work, their experience at Falmouth and the importance of authentic queer representation in photography.   

Let’s start at the beginning – where did your passion for photography come from? 

I was meant to become a doctor, like most people from the grammar school I went to have. But then my friend brought a camera, and I became obsessed. I would play with it whenever we went out shopping or anything. Then I did an online photography course during free periods at school and went on to study a pre-degree course at Arts University Plymouth, before joining Falmouth. 

It's one of those weird butterfly effects. If my friend hadn’t bought that camera, maybe I wouldn’t have got as involved in photography as I did. Or if one of my lecturers hadn’t said something that completely changed how I viewed my work, maybe I wouldn’t have won the Portrait of Britain. 

It was a comment on coming out and realising who you are, and then having to deconstruct those hetero-normative ideas that you've been brought up with and sort of find yourself again.  

How did it feel when you were announced as a Portrait of Britain winner?

Weird! As soon as I finished university, I applied to so many different student competitions that I didn't even get shortlisted for. So, I’d almost forgotten that I had even entered the Portrait of Britain. I couldn't believe it when I found out I'd won. 

I remember getting stuck in the mud and my friend laughing at me as I was taking that shot. And then when I went to London with my mum, suddenly I saw that same photo on bus stop and tube station screens all over the city. I also saw the Portrait of Britain book for sale at the Tate Modern. It was amazing, but very strange. It was just sort of...immensely everywhere... 

Can you tell us about the concept behind the winning work? 

The portrait is from a photo series I did at university of members of my drag family back home in Plymouth. I wanted to look at how queer people sort of ‘reconstruct’ themselves into these new fantastical identities. It was a comment on coming out and realising who you are, and then having to deconstruct those hetero-normative ideas that you've been brought up with and sort of find yourself again.  

The concept was ‘National Geographic meets fashion photography’, so I transformed my friends into these different creatures. I went as far as to write descriptions about each of the characters; what they do, how they eat, how they mate – I got really into it! In the end, it was just me and my friends having fun in a storm! 

I think it’s important for queer people to make queer work, to show that narrative from the perspective of lived experience.

Why is it important to you to represent queer identity in your work? 

I feel like a lot of queer imagery can be so grungy or sharp-edged that it makes it seem almost dirty or underbelly-esque. So, I sort of want to give a new twist to it. I also think it’s important for queer people to make queer work, to show that narrative from the perspective of lived experience.  

My dissertation was actually about queer artists and why they're seen as trailblazers within the artistic community. I think it’s because in comparison to the people that have had a voice for centuries, it seems so new and different. It’s why you have your Alexander McQueens or your Leonard Finks. They were creating work from a set of experiences that other people had never experienced and saying things that others had never needed to say.