Paul Chambers is a photographer based in Guernsey, Channel Islands. Born in 1970, Paul studied Fine Art at Cheltenham College of Art in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After discovering that he was colour-blind, he exchanged the oil and turpentine of the painting studio for the chemicals and red light of the photographic darkroom, beginning a relationship with photography that would eventually become central to his artistic practice. A curious traveller and, in the 1990s, a self-described “doctor of trees”, studying arboriculture at Merrist Wood in Worpelsdon, Surrey, Paul went on to lead an ecumenical community in Guernsey for a decade during the 2000s, during which he gained a Master’s degree in Theology. He subsequently spent another decade working within the Criminal Justice System, where he developed an interest in and practice of restorative justice. His interest in photography developed alongside these experiences. During the 2000s, he undertook documentary work with Christian Aid and Amos Trust in Ghana, Tanzania and Palestine. His photography has since developed into a wide-ranging fine-art practice, often exploring people and the social issues that shape their lives. In 2016, a chain of events culminating in a period in rehabilitation for alcoholism led Paul back to photography. He soon became fascinated by wet plate collodion, a photographic process first developed in the 1850s. Working with large-format cameras and hand-poured collodion, he creates each tintype plate individually, from coating and sensitising the plate through to exposure and development. The result is a unique photographic object, rendered in real silver, in which the imperfections and unpredictability of the process become part of the image. Today, Paul's practice is firmly rooted in wet plate collodion. His work focuses particularly on people, identity, perception and the ways in which we look at one another. He is interested in portraiture that encourages the viewer to move beyond an immediate or familiar reading of a face, allowing the subject to be encountered as a human being rather than reduced to appearance. His ongoing project, Beyond the Surface, in partnership with the charity Face Equality International, brings these ideas together through a series of intimate portraits of people with facial differences. The project explores the relationship between being seen and being looked at, while inviting the viewer to consider the assumptions and first impressions that can shape how we perceive another person. The choice of wet plate collodion is central to this work. A nineteenth-century photographic process is being used to explore profoundly contemporary questions of identity, visibility and human connection. Its slow, physical nature demands a different kind of photographic encounter: each plate must be prepared immediately before exposure and developed moments afterwards. The resulting images are not simply reproductions, but singular objects with their own imperfections, variations and material presence. For Paul, there is an inherent alchemy in this process. Light, chemistry and silver are transformed into a singular image, creating an intriguing tension between an historic photographic technique and contemporary ideas about representation. His portraits occupy a space between past and present, encouraging the viewer to slow down, look more closely and reconsider what they think they see. Paul's work has been exhibited and commissioned in a range of contexts, and he has collaborated with organisations working across art, equality and social change. His photography seeks not simply to record people, but to create space for more considered ways of seeing them. The Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny, where he exhibited in 2023, has described his work as “to be among the realm of alchemy, creating views imbued with a mysterious beauty.” Current practice Portraiture • facial difference • identity • perception • wet plate collodion • social documentary