Chris Porsz: The man behind the lens

Peterborough paramedic and photographer Chris Porsz hit headlines around the world when his first series of ‘Reunion’ pictures – recreating some of his street photography from the 80s with the same subjects decades later – went viral. Many of these people and pictures have become emblematic of life in our city and have embedded themselves in the public imagination – but just who is Chris Porsz, and how does he feel about becoming a regional treasure? The Moment spoke to him to find out...

It feels as though we’re far more familiar with your pictures than we are with you – the man who made them all happen. Do you think your personality is a part of these pictures – that we can tell more about you than we might think by looking at them?
I think, maybe! And that extends from my career as a paramedic, because a huge part of the job was about communicating with people and understanding them, caring for and reassuring them. So, I think the photography complements that well, and also it’s about responding to the moment, grabbing it before it’s gone and thinking on your feet – expect the unexpected!

How does your process of taking pictures – and then of creating books, projects, exhibitions – work?
I’ve got a great local graphic designer, Chris Lane, who came on board when I decided to self-publish, but a lot of it is just walking the miles, really – just getting out there and taking pictures, find something different and capture it in your own style. Part of the magic is meeting those people by chance, I didn’t know many of them beforehand, and I’d often find a great story as well.

There was also a period when I stopped altogether, around 1986. Then in 2009 I sent some pictures to the local paper and ended up getting a regular column, called ‘Paramedic Paparazzo’. It rekindled that long-lost passion, and then I discovered digital, which was amazing! It was a lot to do with the column that people were able to contact me again, years after I took their picture. That was a real light bulb moment in terms of beginning to pull the ‘Reunions’ books and exhibitions together.

What are some of the stand-out moments for you?
I’m often asked, how do I find people? Social media has helped a lot, but sometimes I just get really lucky. One moment in particular stands out – decades ago I took a picture of about four or five lads messing about in a derelict house in Cromwell Road, taken in 1981. About 30 years later, at 3 o’clock in the morning we received a ‘999’ call – and just by chance I was on nights. I knocked on the door and a man answered – he was basically in the middle of having a heart attack. I treated him, gave him oxygen, and he started improving. When we were on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, he said, ‘You took my picture 30 years ago,’ and I thought, ‘Wow!’ I felt like I’d won the lottery! He remembered having the picture taken, but the picture had been published a couple of times in my column as well, so he may well have seen it there and been reminded. That encounter, after a ‘999’ call, led to that Reunion.

Who are your influences and inspirations, in terms of photography?
I’m very inspired by photojournalists, people like Don McCullin. I took pictures of the age of protests: anti- racist marches, NHS protests. I would tend to look for ordinary, everyday people, but also people who stood out from the crowd, like the punks and the Teddy boys.

One of your recent projects has been going coast-to-coast in America and documenting the journey – can you tell us a bit about that?
I’d been before – just to New York and Florida – and New York is a great place to take pictures, it’s a crazy city, obviously! I did a 50-day road trip from San Francisco to New York and bits in between using a combination of Amtrak trains, Greyhound coaches and lots of walking, and I was very conscious that I won’t always be able to do this [Chris is 70] so I’ve got to seize the moment. It was quite a surreal experience at times – I got off the plane in San Francisco, got
on a horrible downtown train, which was filthy, and right behind me was a man clearly off his head, shouting: ‘I want to stab somebody, I want to stab somebody!’ All the locals had already got off by this point, but he got this big, red pair of scissors out of his bag and just totally destroyed the seats – there was stuffing everywhere.

Being out on the streets was a real eye- opener, because of the Fentanyl crisis – obviously we have our problems here, but we still do have something of a safety net left, but they have practically no welfare state. The homeless there are lying in the gutters, unconscious, covered in festering sores, surrounded by excrement – and on the door of every other shop there’s an armed security guard. In Hollywood, on Oscars night – on the sidewalk there’s this tent city and on the other side you’ve got the red carpet…

How did the photography start, for you?
In the early 70s, my then-girlfriend Lesley and I hitchhiked across Europe and North Africa – 6000 miles in about three weeks, it was a crazy journey!

We got to Algeria and there was a camel in a field – I had a Kodak Instamatic, took the picture, got chased by a farmer, got back to England and had it developed… and it was rubbish! I thought, ‘I can do better than this,’ so I did a bit of research, practised by taking pictures of my family, of Lesley (who I had married) and our kids, Emma, Adam and Simon.

I had previously dropped out of studying social work at Sheffield Polytechnic – I wasn’t really engaged by writing long essays about statistics and economics, and I felt it would be easier and more effective for me to pick up my camera and reflect society, and the truth of society, in that way. I came back to Peterborough and worked as a hospital porter, which stood me in good stead for working as a paramedic later. I would go around the hospital between 1980 and 1985, taking pictures, and they formed the basis of my book, Just Be Kind.

That’s a great title for a book about a hospital!
They were my mother’s words. She was a Holocaust survivor; she lost her mother, father, sister and three-year- old niece – they were all murdered in Majdanek concentration camp. She was in the Polish resistance during the war, got captured and ended up in Ravensbruck, the women’s infamous camp in Berlin. Somehow, she survived and came out, emaciated. My father – a Polish paratrooper who was one of the troops liberating Europe – escaped from Poland and came to Britain in the late 1940s, after meeting my mother. I’m very proud of my Polish roots and the contribution Poles made to this country, and to Peterborough.

Reunions photography exhibition is running at Peterborough Museum until 23 March 2024. To find out more about access and opening times, visit peterboroughmuseum.org.uk or phone 01733 864663.

Five boys running (1980, 2016)