Hailing from South London, Yusuf Ozkizil is a great photographer, whos work often focuses on urban environments and surreal social situations. Sometimes going under the pseudonym Chutney Bannister, his work has been featured in many publications, including Time Out London, The Guardian Unlimited, FILE magazine and TheLondonPaper.

Hey, thanks for the interview. Have you always been interested in photography, or did you decide later on that it was something you wanted to do?

No, not at all. It was something I just tripped into. I had a compact camera, but that was bought for taking pictures at parties, and didn’t get any serious usage until I went to visit family back in Turkey, a couple of years ago. I couldn’t speak the language so it was a way of keeping busy, and I found to my surprise I really enjoyed it. When I came back, the habit had stuck. I always have my camera with me. I suppose I’m drawn to unusual things, and sights, and what with my camera being so small, and easy to carry around, I can easily get a picture of something that catches my eye.

Are there any special techniques you use? I noticed a lot of your photos are fairly high contrast.

Not really. When I first began to transfer pictures I really liked onto my computer, the colour just didn’t seem quite right to me. Perhaps it was, and maybe I’m just going colour blind, but they just seemed rather flat, and a little drab. I found that by upping the brightness, contrast levels on iphoto, I’d get get something more like what I saw at the time I took the picture. Sometimes it adds to the drama. I don’t use photoshop, but I am trying to familiarise myself with Aperture, as I use an SLR for jobs that come up, and I need to keep my files more organised.

If you had to choose your most influential artist, who would it be? Conversely, is there any particular type of photography or styles you are not a fan of?

I suppose my Dad has been the most influential person really, as I never got into photography through following someone. Whilst growing up, he’d always point out odd things, people or situations that stood out, he still does, so I guess that must have stuck in my head when I started to take pictures of things. It was after taking a few pictures, that I started to see what had been done by other people, I really like observational stuff, so people like Elliott Erwitt and Martin Parr definitely appeal. Matt Stuart has some great stuff. I like their sense of humour, and their knack for being in the right place, at the right time… with a camera. I’ve been taking a lot of photography on the tube, and it only occured to me recently to see what other people have done. I really like Bruce Davidson, and his pictures on the Subway during the 80s, make the Tube seem boring.

I guess as a result of my tastes, for photographs of people, and unusual situations I’m not really interested in landscape, or wildlife photography.

Where did your inspiration for the surreal line come from?

The "surreal line" project, was a bit of an accident. It never really started out as an idea for a project, more a growing fascination. I was waiting on the platform at Euston Station, and noticed this massive poster for the TV show HEROES. It was full of heads, in a long line, and it occured to me that given their position on the wall, they’d probably end up appearing inside the tube window. There was some time before the tube arrived, so I walked down to that bit of the platform, and sure enough, when the tube arrived, they were perfectly framed by the window. After I took my picture, it just wasn’t the same riding the tube. This also coincided with me taking pictures of people riding the tube. I stopped reading books, so I could keep an eye out for these fleeting moments. I liked how the ads were interacting with the world around them, and how they’d mostly go unnoticed, especially by the person sitting, or standing in front of what was going on. A bit like a private joke I suppose.

Thanks for your time.

More of Ozkizil’s work can be seen on his website, or on his flickr account.