JONATHAN CHERRY: How did you get into photography?

LUKE STEPHENSON: Quite a boring answer but just at school in art lessons there was a really bad darkroom but I just enjoyed faughing around and taking pictures and then I went to college and I got more involved

JC: What was the last photography book you picked up?

LS: I picked up a book on ravens by a japanese photographer at a friends house and can’t remember the name of it.

JC: Can you give two specific examples of people who truly inspire you and why?

LS: Well this is quite hard as being truly inspiring is a difficult task but lots of people just simply inspire me.

JC: What is ‘Stanelli’s Super Circus’ all about?

LS: Well I heard about a puppet theatre near my parents house that put on shows with traditional marionette puppets so I when and watched a show over christmas and discovered that the man who put on theses show had received a grant from the lottery to buy a collection of puppets created by one man called stan parker he made over 100 marionette puppets though out his life and part of this collection was 30 - 40 circus puppets which he used to perform all around the world. I was really interested by the whole story of Stan Parker and the fact that a mans life work had been saved and kept together, plus they are such wonderful objects on there own so I simply wanted to document them.

Lots of information, pictures and video’s about Stan and his puppets can be found here.

JC: How did you decide to compose each puppet / character in these images? I notice they all seem to have a sense of ownership towards the image … almost as if they are alive and giving you there best pose - was this intentional?

LS: Well it wasn’t intended but I soon realized that I couldn’t just have them hanging limp from a pole  in front of a colorama as they  looked dead, even a little detail like there feet not been flat on the floor just looked a bit daft , luckily I had a friend with me helping out or I wouldn’t have been able to take the photo’s and use the puppets so over the course of the day we photographed all the circus puppets and the thing that took the time was working out how each one moved and what they did as it wasn’t always clear and then it was a matter of just letting my friend use the puppet and put it in different positions until I felt I had got a good representation of that puppet. My friend had a great day just playing with puppets really.

JC: Have you ever found making portraits difficult? If yes, what were the circumstances?

LS: I find men a little easier to photograph than women I don’t quite understand why but I just seem to take better pictures of men.

JC: What is next in the pipe line for you photographically?

LS: I am just finishing off a project which I’ve been doing on and off for the past couple of years, I’d like to do a book with it, but we’ll see. other than that I have lots of ideas. I would like to do a project involving people as I’ve been doing lots of still life type stuff. Other than that just carry on as always, but try to do more.

JC: Any thoughts to give recent photography graduates?

LS: Keep plodding on its not a quick fix being a photographer so just keep taking pictures.