Paul Carruthers was born in Tranmere in 1970 and originally dreamed of becoming a footballer.

Following a sports injury, he picked up his first camera, a Fuji Finepix.

The turning point came when he won Graphic Designer of the Year on Merseyside as he explained: “I realised everyone at the ceremony was actually talking about the photographs I had used in my designs rather than the graphic designs themselves.

“After selling my first print at the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool, I invested in a better camera and a stack of photography books, which launched over thirty years behind the lens.”

When Paul moved to Devon twenty years ago, he often went to Totnes and fell in love with the town: “It has a wonderfully eccentric, independent, and creative atmosphere that you simply do not find on a typical high street in the UK, but why was everyone saying it was twinned with Narnia?

“That gave me the idea for the project.

“I set out to find Narnia, or at least the traces of it, in Totnes.

“I found a lion (Aslan on the church) and a stone statue by the café.

“The project just snowballed from there and finally became my multi-year street photography book project,‘Totnes – Twinned With Narnia.”

The book proposal won third Place at the International Photography Awards (IPA) out of nearly 14,000 entries and earned a Silver Medal at the PX3 (Prix de la Photographie Paris) Awards.

Other projects included ‘Grockles’ a long-term street photography series exploring tourism and seaside life across the South West, which won British Life Photographer of the Year, second in the ND awards and an Honourable Mention at the IPA and produced individual images featured in major international competitions.

‘Parade’ was a project shot over several years covering Plymouth, in particular focusing on Royal Parade going through COVID and the felling of the trees on Armada Way.

Alongside these projects, Paul has been honoured to win British Life Photographer of the Year, being ranked the UK’s No. 1 Street Photographer (and fourth in the world) by One Eyeland, claimed Gold at the Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA), International Runner-Up at the Head On Photo Awards in Australia, second Place at the Fine Art Photography Awards and the ND Awards for Grockles, he has recently won first Place in the Silhouette category at the World Street Photo Awards with an image of Totnes and is one of the winners of AAP Magazine street Awards magazine for his series ‘Parade’.

Paul explains how he works: “Many of my favourite shots start as an idea I've drawn in a little art book.

“I carry this book everywhere with me, and if I see something of interest I draw it to remind me to go and shoot it.

“Some projects are a sketch way before I press the shutter.

“Some of these projects have taken many years to come to fruition.

“I draw a lot of inspiration from cinema, particularly Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, using dramatic framing, bold shadows, silhouettes, and strong compositional lines to turn everyday street scenes into visual stories.”

Whether shooting on his Canon DSLR in monochrome or colour, experimenting with long-exposure light trails, or even adding hand-drawn pen-and-ink illustrations to complement a photo book, Paul loves pushing creative boundaries to bring a vision to life.

He has two more projects in the pipeline, but Paul quotes photographer Saul Leiter,: "If I didn't do anything more than my little book, wouldn't that have been enough?"