British portraitist Alastair Thain does something that very few of the other photographers we’ve featured have done: he makes his own cameras. ‘The only way to push the technical boundaries of portraiture in ways that attempted to emulate the achievements of the artists that I most admired,’ he explains, ‘was by building the cameras. There was simply no other path to take that could deliver similar results.’ These artists that he admired – from Andy Warhol to Jack Nicholson – are the subjects of many of the photographs on show here, and captured with his trademark searing intensity in stark black and white. But, given that he’s a man who’s spent his career hanging around some of the most influential artists and thinkers around, it’s perhaps not surprising that Thain always finds a way to go ‘Deeper’ into his subjects, and to peer into their souls.

More information at: Hempstead May Gallery