Promise to be Tender
Publication - Promise to Be Tender
Promise to Be Tender is now published by Photoworks and independent publishers Jane & Jeremy as part of the P5 series, a collection foregrounding experimental approaches to photography, text and collaboration.
Created with Oscar Vinter across a decade marked by illness, precarity and continual movement, the pamphlet brings together 35mm and 120mm film, Polaroids, collage and poems that trace the textures of everyday care, vulnerability, resistance and interdependence. At its centre is our “assisted self‑portrait,” a method developed to reclaim autonomy over representation and honour the shared labour of our relationship.
The images move through bedrooms, hospital rooms, corridors, borrowed homes and bodies of water, holding moments of tenderness, absurdity and quiet defiance. The poems echo and complicate these scenes, weaving reflections on race, gender, disability and community.
Promise to Be Tender is an invitation into a shared imaginarium of crip love, a space where tenderness becomes a form of survival, a politics, and a promise.
You can purchase the publication via Photoworks:
Publication Feature
Photography+ Feature, Without Rivalry or Redundancy
Oscar and I are featured in the latest issue of Photography+, Photoworks’ online magazine dedicated to contemporary photographic practice.
P+ issue #30 In at least one dream! brings together artists working across image and text, exploring the porous boundaries between mediums.
As part of this, writer Hannah Geddes interviewed us for the article Without Rivalry or Redundancy, reflecting on the Photo Poetry Publication Prize and the wider field of poetry, photography collaboration. The piece considers how our work sits within these conversations, the frictions, the harmonies, and the shared labour of making meaning across forms.
Read the article:
To celebrate the launch of our pamphlet Promise to be Tender we are performing at Peckham24.
Photoworks x Peckham24: In at least one dream! photo‑poetry night
📅 Saturday 16 May 2026
⏰ 7:00–9:00pm
📍 Studio 1, Sunset Studios, 2nd Floor, RED STAIRS, Bussey Building, 133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN 🎤 We will be performing work from the pamphlet.
Access:
Studio 1 has direct lift access via the Red Stairs entrance. Lift dimensions: L185 × W81 × H200cm.
Nearest fully accessible toilets are located in Copeland Gallery and The Social (ground floor).
A Bigger Book Fair, Peckham24
The pamphlet will also be available at A Bigger Book Fair, part of the Peckham24 programme, bringing together independent publishers, artists’ books and experimental print practices
Promise to be tender is on show at the Photopoetry display at the V&A South Kensington.
This display considers how photography and poetry can create new meanings when paired in the pages of books. Selected by collector and photopoetry advocate David Solo, the books are available for visitors to handle, read and enjoy.
📅 Until 20th September 2026
📍Photography Centre, Room 98 at V&A South Kensington
🎟️ Free