In January 2010, I began taking a photo each time I went in a loo; posting them to Twitter with the hashtag #loo2010. At the end of the year I wanted to stop but hadn’t done enough trips overseas, so felt I had to keep going (new hashtag #loo2011) until I’d at least captured some European and North American loos. I caught 180 loos in 2010.

The original inspiration was the loo of my friends Gypo and Jo, in Port St Mary on the Isle Of Man. They decorated the walls and ceiling with countless little plastic trolls and also made a musical toilet roll dispenser. It’s a fantastic room, in fact their entire home has been so stunningly beautifully decorated in a mash-up of psychedelia, folk-art and kitsch, it’s like no other. Frustratingly I haven’t been back since I started, so it’s not been captured yet – but I will.

The vague rules are:
(1) Photos are usually the toilet itself or the cistern but (2) if there’s something more interesting, I’ll snap that instead. (3) There’s no connection to what I’ve been doing in the loo: often I’ll go in a loo not to use it, for example changing clothes in venues without dressing rooms, or washing hands. (4) I only capture a loo once; the first time I visit it, (5) unless it receives a major overhaul.

I can’t tell you why I started, or why I have to keep going, hopefully I’ll be able to stop at the end of 2011. I made a limited edition A3 card print – A Year In Loo – of 72 loos from 2010. It was an edition of 253 and there are a few left HERE. Partly this is to raise money to fulfil my dream of a loo photo book. I’ve taken a lot of ‘support’ photos nobody’s seen as well, of different details in the loos, so there is a lot of material.