Stephen Gill combines conceptual, experimental and documentary photography, producing work that takes the locality, history and atmosphere of London’s East End as its subject. His images are often concerned with the details of overlooked and discarded places or objects. He often works in series, exploring a working technique and subject in parallel. Alongside working on his photographic series, Gill has been at the forefront of the recent rise in self-publishing, creating innovative and beautifully designed photography books.

The photographs in the series, Talking to Ants were made in East London between 2009 and 2013. They feature objects and creatures that Gill sourced from the local surroundings and placed into the body of his camera, exposing the film and material inside the camera simultaneously. As he has noted:

'I hoped through this method to encourage the spirit of the place to clamber aboard the images and be encapsulated in the film emulsion, like objects embedded in amber. My aim was to evoke the feeling of the area at the same time as describing its appearance as the subject was both in front and behind the camera lens at the same moment. I like to think of these photographs as in-camera photograms in which conflict or harmony has been randomly formed in the final image depending on where the objects landed. … By having such interventions very often you are obscuring, deleting or holding back in equal amount to adding, so often there are feelings of harmony and conflict, a confusion of scale or lack of clarity. This denial of information I believe somehow offers space for other things to pass through or the subject to make itself heard.'

Gills’ experimental process allows both actual and conceptual immersion in the scene reinventing the position of landscape in the image. The title refers to a boyhood memory of his school friends teasing him when concentrated and absorbed, fascinated by looking closely and intently at the insects.