‘Talk about the passion’ is the first solo exhibition of Zackary Mckraken’s street and social documentary photography, and it is an introduction to both the fun and playful side of his adventures using point and shoot cameras, as well as showcasing the various social projects that have been self published in his xerox photobooks or zines as we now commonly call it.

From playing witness to the recent rebirth and wild craze of the Toad in the Hole (East Sussex pub game tradition ) phenomenon , to his attempts at capturing the heart of his local youth boxing club and the story of its club owner. To bothering local fishermen to take him aboard on a shift at sea…and finally introducing his current and ongoing deeply personal portrait of the reconnection with his estranged mother and family in Jaywick, Essex, after forty years.

His work is, in his own words, “curious and scrappy, but I know there’s magic in there. And I wanted to grab it, bottle it up in a little vile of a photograph…just as I felt it in the very moment”.

My name is Zackary Mckraken.

Essentially, I’m a street photographer, using any old point and shoot film cameras, which I have carried with me everywhere I go, every day, and for many years.

My pictures can range from fun and playful street scenes finding fun and curiosity in both human behaviour as well as projecting interactions onto inanimate things I find on the street, to focusing in, in a more deeper social documentary style, on areas of the local community that I find interesting.

Having started taking pictures in 2002 doing a Music and visual art degree Brighton university

I have since self published three zines to date and these being ‘Sea Haze, 2019’, ‘Toadrag , 2020’ and, ‘Whitehawk ABC, 2021’ .

I am currently working on a very personal documentary on the meeting of my mother and family after nearly 40 years In her home town of Jaywick, Essex.

This project is funded by the Arts Council and will culminate in the release of both a book and exhibition in 2025.