Shadow & Light Monthly #77

Shadow & Light is a list of curated photography stories, features, techniques, news and inspiration that I’ve come across this month.

In this final edition of 2025 we reflect on the legacy of Martin Parr, explore intimate portraits made in the quiet of night, and celebrate extraordinary nature photography from above and below the surface. From daring aerial pioneers and site-specific street work to personal journeys through cities, taxis and phone boxes, this month’s Shadow & Light is a reminder of the many ways photography helps us understand the world.

So, with no further ado, I give you this month’s Shadow & Light Monthly. Go grab yourself a cuppa and enjoy this month’s selections below. Please let me know in the comments what you think.

Pick of the month – Taxi: Journey Through My Windows (1977-1987)

For a decade from 1977 to 1987, Brooklyn-born photographer Joseph Rodríguez drove a taxi across New York City while quietly building one of the most evocative documentary bodies of work to emerge from that era. Rather than separate his art from his day job, Rodríguez used the view from his cab – its windows, rear-view mirror and back seat – as both studio and narrative frame, capturing the city’s streets, subcultures and unscripted human moments in rich black-and-white. 

Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 1977–1987, published by powerHouse Books and exhibited widely, including at Photoville and First Street Green Cultural Park, gathers these images into a cohesive portrait of New York during a turbulent decade. From late-night clubgoers spilling out into the dawn, to family life and quiet street scenes at sunrise, Rodríguez’s photographs frame life’s diverse rhythms through the intimate, mobile lens of his cab’s interior. 

Rodríguez’s vantage point was born of necessity and curiosity: working long early-morning shifts while studying photography, his camera became another tool in the cab, used to record a city teetering between chaos and cultural vibrancy. The resulting series doesn’t simply document street life, it reveals moments of empathy, humour and quiet dignity amid the grit, showing lives and communities often overlooked. 

For a deeper look at this compelling decade-long project and the vision behind it, read the full feature on Joseph Rodríguez’s site. 

Additional reads

RIP Martin Parr: The Photographer Who Found Joy in the Ordinary

Last month we lost one of Britain’s most famous photographers, Martin Parr, and it hit the photography world hard. I was a big fan of his work – his bright, colourful, humorous takes on British culture brought joy and insight to everyday life. Parr made working-class holidays, village fetes, supermarket queues and seaside scenes feel monumental, using saturated colour, direct flash and an eye for the beautifully absurd to celebrate the ordinary with empathy and wit. He truly found joy in the ordinary. 

What many people don’t know is how different his early creative practice was. Long before the vivid colours became his signature, Parr produced compelling black-and-white work, a quieter and less-seen part of his output that reveals a thoughtful documentary instinct beneath the playful surface. I experienced this firsthand when I visited his Rhubarb Triangle exhibition here in Wakefield a few years ago. Seeing that earlier monochrome work in person changed how I understood his photographic voice and range. 

Born in Surrey in 1952, Parr knew from his teens that photography was his calling. His breakthrough came with The Last Resort (1986), a series shot on the beaches of New Brighton that sparked both acclaim and controversy for its unvarnished look at British holiday culture. Critics sometimes saw mockery in his images, but Parr genuinely loved the people he photographed, approaching them with curiosity, empathy and a “schoolboy-like sense of fun.” He described his practice as making “serious photographs disguised as entertainment,” using humour and colour to smuggle in deeper social observation. 

Over his long career he published more than 100 books, co-authored The Photobook: A History, served as president of Magnum Photos, and founded the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol to support emerging photographers. He continued working until the end, even publishing an autobiographical collection this year titled Utterly Lazy and Inattentive. Parr’s legacy is secure: he changed how we see ourselves and showed that compelling photography can come from paying attention to the everyday. 

For a full tribute and more on Parr’s life and impact, read the article on Digital Camera World.

Phone Booth Photo Project Becomes Unusual Exhibition

Amateur photographer Chris Bennett has turned an ordinary, soon-to-be-removed British phone booth in Lancaster into an extraordinary and deeply personal exhibition space. What began as a rainy morning experiment – shooting images from inside the unloved booth, through its scratched, sticker-covered glass – grew into a long-term creative project called KX-100, named after the specific phone box model. The accumulated “patina” on the glass panes lent Bennett’s photographs a distinct texture and quality that he found unexpectedly compelling, and he continued to return to the booth to make hundreds of images of life on the surrounding street. 

When the phone box was slated for removal, Bennett seized the moment to create something meaningful: with permission from BT, he installed about 70 small prints of his work inside the very booth where the pictures had been taken. The exhibition, on display until the kiosk is dismantled, transforms the confined 7-ft by 3-ft space into a kind of immersive, site-specific gallery that celebrates both the dying legacy of the classic British phone box and the everyday stories of the Lancaster community. Bennett has even offered passersby the chance to take a print home if they recognise themselves in one of the images, replacing taken prints with others so the show evolves with its audience. 

For a closer look at Bennett’s creative approach and this unusual exhibition, read the full article on PetaPixel.

And Finally – Daniel Arnold’s Stark, Sentimental Portrait of New York

Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do offers a deeply personal and evolving look at life in New York – both its chaos and its quiet human moments. Over the past fifteen years, Arnold has become one of the city’s most compelling street photographers, known for his raw, spontaneous images and his ability to find humour, tenderness and complexity in everyday life. His new monograph You Are What You Do, published by Loose Joints, marks a shift from the punchy, frenetic energy of his debut Pickpocket to a more reflective, gentle and introspective vision of the city and himself.

The book spans work made throughout the same decade as his earlier collection but reveals a quieter look at New York – moments of laughter, sorrow, intimacy and unguarded humanity. Arnold himself explains how a decade marked by social upheaval, personal loss and changing relationships with social media influenced this tonal change. He’s become more selective about sharing work online and now approaches photography as a meditation rather than a performance. The sequencing in You Are What You Do – free of captions or dates – invites readers to wander through the visual rhythm of the city much as Arnold wanders its streets, open to the unexpected.

The images range from small, tender interactions on the subway to larger, symbolic moments on the streets, and even include candid fashion and celebrity encounters alongside everyday life. Arnold’s underlying philosophy – that photography is a way to “cut a rectangle out of the world and paste your own version into it” – shines through on every page. Rather than seeking a single narrative, he embraces the sprawling, messy, beautiful continuum of city life and his own place within it.

For a deeper dive into his creative process and to see more from You Are What You Do, read the full interview and feature on AnOther.

Until next time…

I hope you enjoy the articles above. Don’t forget you can follow my Shadow & Light magazine over on Flipboard if you’d like to see more of what I’m reading if you like what you’ve seen here.