Jack Davison’s barefaced and brooding London portraits

London photographer Jack Davison is fast making a name for himself with his singular lens. Crisp with just the right amount of grit, his portraits are timeless in their subject whilst being modern in their execution. Swinging between a pensive documentary style in black and white and experimental plays of colour and composition, Jack’s work is a study in contrast.

Given the maturity of his style, you might be surprised to learn he actually graduated from an English Literature degree not long ago. “I never really stopped taking pictures from when I was 15 or 16, so I went to study English quite aware photography was always going to win out in the end,” he says. Jack credits photographer Mark Michaelson’s archival book of mugshots and miscreants, Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, and “the people I met on Flickr when I first started taking pictures” as some of the biggest influences on his photography.

The young lensman is a regular contributor to Dan Crowe and Matt Willey’s Port magazine, where he scored his first commission, and he had a massive photo spread in the first issue of its sister magazine Avaunt earlier this year. He has also shot for both Garage and Double . Of that first commission Jack says “ Port said that they wanted me to do a fashion story and I could cast it and shoot the way I shoot, but they’d be in charge of clothing. Alex at Port is really great at putting up with my weird crops and habit of ignoring clothes.”

His personal work is no less impressive, so we asked Jack to send through a selection of portraits shot in and around London over the last year. Barefaced, brooding and often stocked with idiosyncrasies, they showcase Jack’s unusual approach to portraiture. He is definitely one to watch.