"For some people a photograph is an affirmation of existence. For others it questions existence. On a most fundamental level one may question a likeness. ‘How is that me? ... It does not look like me ... but it is there in front of me."

Steve Pyke’s best-known portrait work has sought to provide a conspectus of the "faces of our time", to record those who have made a contribution to the history of the age. Although many of those photographed would admit (some with reluctance, others with delight) to the appellation "celebrity", Pyke’s approach makes no concession to such a meretricious notion. They are recorded with exactly the same care as that devoted to those whose names will never figure in the tabloids or Who’s Who, the unremembered, ordinary folk who survived wars, scratched livings from the street, or put on their uniforms with pride so that they could be immortalised on the film wound through an old Rolleiflex.

Conceived with a few nods in the direction of major figures in the history of art and photography such as Van Dyke, Dürer, August Sander and Irving Penn, Pyke’s portraits derive their coherence from the fact that they form part of a great task of classification. The only way out of the conundrum — so many faces, so little time — is to construct a big grid where each portrait can find its natural slot. So Pyke has his collections — philosophers, veterans, film directors, writers, prisoners, itinerants, and so on. They are ways of making sense of a vast enterprise: "faces of our time".

© Peter Hamilton