Six years before, his wife had bought him a Fujifilm X100 for his 40th birthday and encouraged him to start taking pictures with it.
He had always loved film, having been raised on ’80s and ’90s cinema like The Lost Boys, Big Trouble in Little China and Stand By Me. He describes Home Alone, of all things, as “more than entertainment for troubled kids like me,” and will share his connection to the classic movie’s study of “trauma response” and the way it, and films like it, saved him. Born in Nigeria in 1977, Harriman was the only Black kid at his British boarding school.
Cinema quickly became his way of connecting to the world. He was obsessed with the cinematography of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, to the point of delivering a school presentation on its use of light when he was 9 years old.
The camera was a little digital, fixed-lens gem that is still beloved among photographers for its similarity to film. Harriman turned to YouTube to figure out how to use it, seeking out content creators with small subscriber bases like Mattias Burling, whose passion is buying secondhand cameras and figuring out their quirks.
Harriman’s work to this day is as focused on capturing everyday life as it was at the beginning. He would hit the streets of London and observe. Find slices of life in every frame he took.