Tom Martin (32) is a British Commercial and Portrait photographer from the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire. His work combines elements of fashion, music and alternative culture and is stylistically distinctive more often than not marrying quirky characters to colourful backgrounds.
About ‘Am Int‘:
Am Int is a documentary project based around an annual festival in the East Midlands in the UK. The Americana International festival has one simple theme it is for people who like ‘American things’. When I first saw the poster advertising the event, I was really intrigued as to who would go to such and event, it seemed like such a broad theme.
I spent 3 days at the festival in the summer of 2015 wandering around, photographing candidly and portraits and talking to people. Most of the patrons of the festival although dressed as cowboys, hillbillies and rockers were from the Midlands and more often than not had actually travelled to America very few times. The festival truly did celebrate all things American, good and bad and the people who attended where a tightknit community some of whom had been attending the event for decades.
During my time at the festival the same conversation kept coming up, if you like American things so much, why not simply move to America? I never really got a proper answer but I feel like most of the people I met preferred the company and comfort they found in attending this slightly surreal event.
