I still have my first camera, and remember the thrill it gave me to take my first photographs. I enjoyed the way my father was interested, and gave me advice: what I wanted was a 35mm model. This was not a question for most people, but he came from a generation when the 35mm format was an exciting innovation, allowing a new creative, portable freedom. One of my very first pictures, complete with my brother's Easy Rider poster on the bedroom wall:

My father told me about the original Leica and Contax models, and how they started the revolution. He had a few old photography books, and told me that he once considered it as a career. A few years after that, he introduced me to darkroom work. He owned his own business, which was a testament to his extraordinary resourcefulness. He was managing director, shop floor worker, marketing officer, product designer…and he built many of the tools he used on a daily basis. He once explained to a neighbouring factory that compressed air was a fantastic tool; he ran a generator which powered his inventions.

My father decided that he needed a new brochure, and - characteristically - that he would do it himself. I went with him to purchase the camera, enlarger, chemicals etc. A few days later, I stood with him while he showed me a print starting to appear in a tray, describing it as a magical process.

Years later, I had a similar thrill when I first went online. I'd been hearing about the Internet for a year or two, but it had not really interested me. I needed a new computer, and decided I would find out what it was all about. Nervous, excited and uncomprehending, my new modem connected down the phone line; suddenly, my computer was linked into the World Wide Web. Amazing.

The two experiences were similar because they both concerned a new and empowering technology. More subtly though, they suddenly revealed new horizons of communication and creative possibility.

When I finished my first degree, I considered pursuing my interest in photography; I read Susan Sontag's book (On Photography)and discovered there was a critical context for me to explore. I enrolled on a BTEC course in London, but became bored with its technical rather than aesthetic emphasis.

Sontag considers how ubiquitous the photograph is, and how it has changed our consciousness and allowed new forms of social and psychological documentation. It was a seminal book, and while more fashionable people like Roland Barthes have attempted similar but more abstract studies (Camera Lucida), I still think Sontag's book is important. More recently I have read The Photograph by Graham Clarke, which is an analysis of how photographs can be 'read' or interpreted in a cultural studies framework:

"Whenever we look at a photograph we engage in a series of complex readings which relate as much to the expectations and assumptions that we bring to the image as to the photographic subject itself. Indeed, rather than the notion of looking, which suggests a passive act of recognition, we need to insist that we read a photograph, not as an image but as a text...the photograph achieves meaning through what has been called a 'photographic discourse': a language of codes which involves its own grammar and syntax" (p 27).

I adopt the same critical stance towards multimedia or 'digital art'. For example, the notion of 'interaction' has been given, I believe, an undue cultural status - it has been fetishised. Martin Lister in The Photographic Image in Digital Culture makes the same point: digital practice is subject to critical evaluation, like anything else.

The photographic discourse and the photographic aesthetic preceded and - I believe - underlies contemporary digital work, which often lacks a coherent critical context.

These are some of my earliest photographs, when I was studying at school.