Sharifa, London Bus, Waterloo, August, 2022. 18 year old East Midlands-born musician @shzrifa is a singer, rapper, producer, artist and DJ, studying in London.
Go watch/listen to the brilliant COME HELP ME, produced by AxNuke / video directed by Gregor Emmanuel & Sharifa. Link in bio. 🙌
Happy holidays everyone! ❤️
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#London #documentary #musician #rapper #producer #Sharifa #summer #city #120mm #Mamiya #Street #film #mediumformat #analogue #park #filmsnotdead #lovefilm #portrait #portraitphotography #documentingbritain #portraiture #filmdiscovered #waterloobus #waterloo #TFL #bus #londonbus #transportforlondon #londonsummer #framelinesmag
Delighted to be shortlisted and amongst some amazing photographers for this year’s Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition.
This image is taken from some new work photographed in July 2025 of the Langholm Common Riding.
Langholm Common Riding, Getting ready for ’The Kirk Wynd Gallop, July 2025. @royalphotographicsociety
ďż˝#IPE167Shortlist #IPE167ShortlistedPhotographer
A new image from my series Breakfast at Nana’s. Early morning rises with the kids at my mum’s home in Carlisle. Roo, Breakfast at Nana’s, Carlisle 2025.
#family #son #breakfast #sunlight #portrait
All Along the Westway is a series made while walking in London during the COVID-19 lockdowns. With the city reduced to daily exercise—and later, as restrictions eased—I kept returning to one of my favourite areas, tracing the Westway on foot from White City to Edgware Road.
The Westway has always felt like coming home. I lived in this part of London for ten years. A glimpse of Trellick Tower was my landmark: a quick, reassuring sign that I was nearly home. These photographs are about familiarity, a quieter city, and a single stretch of road holding memory, guiding you through place and time, and back to yourself.
#mapscollective #maps #mattmacpake #family #Westway #road #allalongthewestway #home #covid #documentary #place #portraiture #photooxford #pandemic #c-19 #skaters #skatepark #whitecity #northwestlondon #London
#A40 #WestLondon #LondonLockdown #CovidDiaries #LockdownWalks
#UrbanWalking #Psychogeography #BrutalistLondon #TrellickTower
My mum’s kitchen becomes a light trap for the rising sun for roughly thirty minutes on clear mornings. By then, I’d already been up with the children for a while, and by then they’d be fully awake — playing, talking, eating breakfast — absorbed in their own early-day rhythm.
I’m not religious, despite being raised Catholic, but that brief wash of light felt almost spiritual. I’ve long carried the regret of not making more photographs with my dad, who died a few months after Dottie was born. In that sense, these mornings offered a way to do what I couldn’t then: to record the small, ordinary tenderness of family life — in Nana’s space.
That intention gained extra weight later this year, when my mum was given the all clear from breast cancer. There’s a portrait of my mum with her trusty cup of tea, which feels like it can solve almost all of life’s problems, and at the end, a portrait I made with my dad in 2017, when I spent a week looking after him.
#mapscollective #maps #mattmacpake #family #SEND #SENDkids #supportsendkids #family #EHCP #home #nana #breakfast #monring #light #kitchen #breakfastAtNanas #familyproject #documentary #place #portraiture #photooxford #portraitofbritain
Three or four times a year, we pack up and head north on the motorway to visit family in Carlisle. My children are still small, and they still wake up early each morning, which, of course, means I do too. Visiting Nana feels like an adventure for them, so they are always excited.
Breakfast at Nana’s is a series I’ve been making for years, although I only properly recognised it as a series two or three years ago.
It began with a roll of 35mm film: my daughter, Dottie, perched at the breakfast table early one morning, about one. I’ve included that photograph at the end of the sequence today. The image was selected for the Portrait of Britain award in 2019 and exhibited at Photo Oxford in 2023.
Breakfast at Nana’s is a portrait series observing the early morning relationship between my children and their grandmother. The photographs were made at dawn, as soft sunlight filtered through the windows of my mum’s house — a time of day shaped by stillness, repetition, and care. My children wake early each morning, and these quiet moments before the day begins have become a shared, unspoken routine.
Both of my children have special educational needs, and my mum is the only grandparent they have ever known. Their other grandparents died before they were born, or shortly after my daughter’s arrival. While absence sits quietly in the background of this work, the photographs focus on presence: the intimacy of everyday connection between children and their nana.
This project is an attempt to hold on to something ordinary and fleeting. Through natural light and close observation, I wanted to create portraits that speak to intergenerational care, vulnerability, and love — not as spectacle, but as something lived, repeated, and deeply human.
#mapscollective #maps #mattmacpake #family #SEND #SENDkids #supportsendkids #family #EHCP #home #nana #breakfast #monring #light #kitchen #breakfastAtNanas #familyproject #documentary #place #portraiture #photooxford #portraitofbritain
Hello, this is @mattmacpake , delighted to be taking over the @map6collective Instagram account this week. I hope you enjoy the work. Let me know your thoughts or pop any questions in the comments below.
Breakfast at Nana’s is a series observing the early morning relationship between my children and their grandmother. The photographs were made at dawn, as soft sunlight filtered through the windows of my mum’s house — a time of day shaped by stillness, repetition, and care. My children wake early each morning, and these quiet moments before the day begins have become a shared, unspoken routine.
Both of my children have special educational needs, and my mum is the only grandparent they have ever known. While absence sits quietly in the background of this work, the photographs focus on presence: the intimacy of everyday connection between children and their nana.
This project is an attempt to hold on to something ordinary and fleeting. Through natural light and close observation, I wanted to create images that speak to intergenerational care, vulnerability, and love — not as spectacle, but as something lived, repeated, and deeply human.
#mapscollective #maps #mattmacpake #family #SEND #SENDkids #supportsendkids #family #EHCP #home #nana #breakfast #monring #light #kitchen #breakfastAtNanas #familyproject #documentary #place #portraiture
We’re delighted to have Matt MacPake as our next Guest Takeover @mattmacpake
Matt MacPake is a London-based documentary photographer whose work explores the quiet complexity of community, place, and family life. Grounded in everyday experiences, his portraits offer intimate reflections on the relationships, routines, and environments that shape us. Working predominantly with natural light, Matt’s photography is rooted in observation and trust, revealing the beauty and meaning in ordinary moments.
His portrait, A Lady Dancing, won the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity award in 2023 and has been exhibited internationally at PHOTO22 (Melbourne) and India FotoFest, as well as featured in the Hoxton Mini Press book of the series. Matt has also been shortlisted for Portrait of Britain and published in the Then There Was Us Annual.
Earlier in his career, Matt’s project To and from the North Circular was shortlisted for The Bar Tur Award at The Photographers’ Gallery. A portrait from the series—of a night-shift security guard named John—was selected for Portrait Salon, featured in The Guardian and BBC, and placed fourth overall.
In 2019, Matt’s work appeared in Portrait of Britain Vol. 2, with Breakfast at Nana’s—a portrait of his daughter—selected as a winner and shown nationally on JCDecaux digital screens. His photographs have been exhibited in Berlin, San Francisco, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Kraków, and across the UK, including Photofusion, where he recently took part in the artist talk series FAM: What Does Fam Mean to You?
Matt holds a BA in Photography from Blackpool and Fylde College (2005) and an MA with Distinction from the University of Hertfordshire (2015), where he is now Principal Lecturer and Programme Leader in Digital Arts. He is currently developing projects exploring the lives of children in his extended family, among others.
