JONATHAN CHERRY: What gets you up in the morning? 

AARON GUY: Intrigue most mornings but others its The Mr. Men Show on Channel 5. I recommend it; the stereotypes are brilliant. Laugh out loud as its good to begin the day with laughs.

JC: Are there any emerging photographers inspiring you at the moment?

AG: Lots … there are some very interesting work coming from young British photographers at the moment but I get a great deal of my inspiration from either film, music or reading. I’ve had to reduce my intake of new photography as there is a lot of repetition and I just can’t absorb it all… and it’s not fair to just flick, if someone has made it I should give it the time. 

JC: What is your current project all about?

AG: My own land & my own people. In conscious thought it began with questions about home and obsession with my fathers work, which I suppose seeds were set in my sub-conscious at the age of 6 of course I never envisaged photographing it. This has lead me into exploring the North East as a region and its people I’m re-mapping and surveying its developing some interesting chapters and raising more bloody questions  

JC: What initially drew you to photography?

AG: Questions that I can’t answer. The questions I refer to Ironically enough raised themselves while I was on a beach in Newcastle NSW Australia 2005. I was visiting family and friends & was meant to be emigrating taking a job as an engineers assistant but these questions raised such a massive curiosity and necessity to explore these thoughts I returned home to begin shooting, reading and researching (I love the sudden left turns that happen in life).

JC: How do you find juggling personal & commercial work?

AG: Love it. One needs the other on many levels.  

JC: Any advice to recent photography graduates?

AG: Stop, look and listen and then copy, learn and develop this way in a world where we are all trying to speak in a visual language you may find your own dialect and dialect is more important than just a voice.

JC: Favourite tree?

AG: Haha brilliant question for me seeing as I’ve spent the past few years looking at fossilised trees … woodland such an amazing landscape too …

Well it has to be Pine it smells amazing and reminds everyone of Christmas but more importantly and the reason we have the forestry commission is that was the wood of choice for making roof props for coal mines. Miners trusted it more than any other type of wood and will tell you that they would here the timber speak as the earth moved above their heads. The pine prop will groan and yawn telling you what’s happening before it breaks.