Here are a selection of photos that reflect the kind of stories I often cover. If you would like to see more of my work, approach me about a potebtial project / story or purchase any of my limited edtion prints please visit my site at markesper.com. Thanks for stopping by.

Mark Esper
July 2014

It is 30th August 2009 at europe’s largest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival. Bachanal Mas*, the love child of Artistic Director Paul O’Donoghue and Band Leader Richard Gallimore  are now taking to the streets. It is the day before their troupe’s entry to into festival history but their nerves aren’t showing. Following their huge sound system through the north London streets the Bachanal Mas’s revellers have only one thing on their minds. They have come to ‘palance’ and have extreme fun as their MC’s calypso / soca beats shake the tarmac of north London in their wake.

gainst the backdrop of financial turmoil and attacks on migrants on the Greek mainland there is still work to be found on the Greek island of Santorini. But it is the hardest kind. Stood next to quay number E26, three migrant Bangladeshi fisherman, Amil, Smmepu and Lalmia are holes in the net of the Greek migrant story. Tending to the never ending piles of discarded fishing nets on the quayside of Vlichada, they toil under the Santorini sunshine. They have quietly passed unnoticed through the net of nationalism engulfing the Greek mainland.

There is a gathering after every Christmas which takes place at high altitude. When most people are trying to shake off seasonal hang-overs and face up to the prospect of another year working at their desks, others gather to play high in the French Alps. The Snow Kite Masters is now seven years old. Like the mountain’s morning light it creeps around the calendar, hugging the hillsides of the mind. Lifts are thumbed, bags are packed, flights are booked and baggage allowances weighed so as to make the long journey to France.

Two sides of a road in the middle of the desert. It sounds dull doesn’t it? But this is a overly simplistic description of the Las Vegas strip. Since its rebirth by Bugsy Seigel in the late 40′s it has continued to act as a magnet to many of the most weird and wonderfully overdone aspects of the American dream. In present day, locals and tourists mix under the flickering neon lighs as the tail-gazing bumpers of stretched-out limousines push each other along at 2 mph. Is the strip a slice of heaven or a slice of real life? Las Vegas strikes me as a microcosm of that afore mentioned American dream: A brightly neon-lit success albeit with a seamier underbelly of an ignored truth.

“In The Reign” is a series of portraits of the on-going idiosyncratic love affair between the Royal Family and its public. Often affectionate, sometimes strained, the relationship between the British monarchy and its subjects never dulls. (This is an ongoing project)

The Repton Boys Boxing Club was started in the late 1800′s in London’s deprived east end. The boxing club was born out of Repton Boys Club, which was created by Repton Public School so as to give support and direction to young men in what was one of the country’s most deprived areas. Now as it was then, it is a chapel to some hard, basic rules. Arms up, head down and punch harder than the other guy or get ready to kiss the canvas…

On October 15th 20112, 2000 Anti-capitalist demonstrators gathered on the steps of the St. Paul’s Cathedral to march the London Stock Exchange as part of a global protest at the world banking system. Police kettled the protesters outside the cathedral as the demonstrators gave speeches and set up camp by erecting tents. Thus ‘Occupy London Stock Exchange’ (or ‘Occupy LSX’ as it was known to its residents) was born.

In Perpignan‘s medieval streets, a backstreet community huddles together untouched by modernity. Bright, narrow shafts of sunlight taunt from above as children gather to play barefoot on the tarmac below. Between Perpignan’s twin identities of France and Catalonia, this Spanish, Arab and Romany district resists the mainstream, caught in its own arid, sun-scorched time capsule.

Rivalling Notting Hill Carnival as Europe’s largest street party, Gay Pride sweeps over the UK capital each in a parade of the bizarre and the beautiful. Joy washes through the streets in a multi-coloured wave of sound and laughter. With the centre of London flooded in colour and pageantry it’s as if, for only one day, she exhales and smiles…

ulian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing web site WikiLeaks.com, has created controversy like no other in recent times. Protests, demonstrations and court appearances all seek the truth. The rape allegation: a cover up or conspiracy? Caught in legal limbo-land, Assange is followed, by everyone: the police, the media, his celebrity friends and a dedicated band of supporters.