We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are made.

The shape and cut of a jacket. The weight of a jumper. The feel of a piece of steel in your hand when we make a knife. We make decisions about all of it, then photograph the finished object before it goes out into the world.

And thinking about it, that is usually the last moment it belongs entirely to us.

A jacket might end up on the back of a chair at work. A jumper gets pulled on for a cold morning at the park. Someone keeps a chip-fork in a coat pocket and forgets it’s there until the next time they fancy a chippie-dinner.

These aren’t the scenes we tend to see in clothing campaigns. They’re where the things we make begin to have a life.

Fashion often shows clothes at their most untouched. Even the signs of wear can be arranged in advance, as though a life can be added to something before it has been lived in.

I’ve never been interested in making a new thing look old. I’d rather make something someone wants to keep using, then let time do whatever it does.

The photographs we make for Mamnick can show where we come from and what catches our attention. That was part of the thinking behind previous Journal entries - DEPTH and REAL. But a photograph taken on a bus or in a Sheffield factory is still only one moment. The person who wears the clothes carries them into all the moments that follow.

They might wear a jacket in a way I hadn’t imagined. They might take it somewhere I’ve never been. It will come back from those places different.

I like that we lose control of it.

Use gives an object its own history. It tells us which details mattered enough to notice, which ones quietly did their job, and whether we made something worth reaching for again.

That’s what I hope for with Mamnick. That the things we make find their way into somebody’s ordinary day, and become part of it.

What do you think?

This Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett

Jonė Reed is a Lithuanian photographer living and working in London, whose photographs move between portraiture, self-portraiture, still life and landscape.

There is a quiet theatricality to her work — ordinary objects, gestures and places become strange, intimate and sometimes melancholic. Rather than explaining what an image means, Reed seems more interested in what it can hold: memory, feeling, ambiguity and the things that are difficult to put into words.

For 10 Questions, we spoke about photography as a necessity, growing up around theatres, photographing her children, Lithuania, melancholy, curiosity — and becoming less interested in explaining everything.

1.

You’ve described photography as both a necessity and a therapeutic act - a way of externalising things that might otherwise remain internal. After nearly fifteen years of making photographs, do you still need photography in the same way you did when you started?

Yes. The need has fluctuated from time to time, but I’ve now grown to realise that essentially, I couldn’t do without it. A bit like an addict without a hit I become rather awful if I don’t get to take photographs for a while.

It is so embedded in the way I experience the world that I’m not sure I can separate it from myself anymore. I am constantly making photographs in my head, even without a camera. I notice light, gestures, objects, strange little moments.

The strange thing, though, is that I’m not particularly emotionally attached to my photographs afterwards. Perhaps the need is in the making of them rather than in having them.

2.

Self-portraiture has been such an important part of your work. When you put yourself in front of the camera, do you feel like you’re photographing yourself, or does your body become another material - like light, colour or an object - that you can use to make the image?

I rarely think of a self-portrait as being about my physical self, or my shell. I’m quite a solitary person, so using myself is partly convenient - I’m simply there. But at the same time, I find self-portraiture quite difficult, as the challenge is having to be behind and in front of the lens simultaneously. But I completely admit  - I have often used my body almost as an object, as another element with which to create the image. And sometimes, quite simply, I really wanted to express my own feelings. Nowadays, however, I’m happier photographing other people.

3.

You grew up around theatres and have spoken about an early sense of the ‘world as a stage’. There’s something wonderfully theatrical about many of your photographs without them feeling overly staged. Do you think you’re documenting little realities, or quietly constructing your own?

I spent a lot of time backstage as a child, around rehearsals, sets, scripts and all the behind-the-scenes drama. I think that stayed with me, and perhaps that’s how I see the world: a little bit more dramatically.

But I’m not particularly interested in constructing something perfectly. Often the starting point is completely real. Sometimes there’s a scene already there, just waiting to happen a gesture, a person, an object, a particular light. Sometimes, however, it does need a little bit of “directing” and its most fun when someone is very willing to play.

4.

Your children and family have gradually become another major part of your archive. Has photographing them changed your understanding of what a family photograph can be - and do you ever think about what these pictures will mean to them when they’re older?

I’ve never been particularly interested in the traditional idea of family photography if anything, it slightly bores me. My kids are around, and it feels natural to take photographs of them. And I’m not biased, but I do think they are very photographable.

Gradually it became just like anything else I photograph -  part of who I am. I wasn’t documenting them as such. The only series that slightly resembles any sort of chronological document is our summers in Lithuania. But mostly it is all play: sometimes very willing, sometimes rather annoyed. And at some point, they do or have said NO to being photographed, which of course I have to respect.

But yes, I do think about what these photographs might mean to them later. I’d love for them to have a slightly different kind of proof of their existence. Hopefully they’ll think, Oh, this was an interesting photo of me. My mum was quite arty.

Or perhaps they’ll think it was all my imagination just fragments of light and maybe they won’t recognise themselves at all, almost like fictional characters.

5.

There’s often melancholy in your photographs, but rarely sadness in a straightforward sense. What is it about melancholy that you find visually interesting - and can a photograph hold a feeling that you couldn’t necessarily explain in words?

I think I am, and have always been, a melancholic person, but I never intentionally set out to make a melancholic image. If a viewer sees melancholy in it, then it must have happened internally, I guess.

I think photographs can hold feelings that words flatten. I’m quite suspicious of explaining photographs too much. I even dislike titles. If I could explain everything I wanted to say in words, perhaps I would be writing novels instead.

6.

Your still lifes can make very ordinary objects feel strangely significant. You’ve talked about objects carrying echoes of home, childhood and things passed down through families. Are you photographing the object itself, or what has accumulated around it?

I’m not interested in documenting an object faithfully. I’m more interested in why, internally, I chose to photograph that thing in the first place. What was it that made me notice it or feel something towards it - I think the meaning comes from whatever associations, memories or feelings I’ve unconsciously attached to it. But, sometimes, let’s just face it  - some objects are very photogenic and that’s all there is to it.

7.

You’re Lithuanian but have lived and worked in London for many years. Are there things about the way you see - aesthetically or emotionally - that you recognise as distinctly Lithuanian only because you’ve spent so long away from it?

That is such a great question that I almost don’t know how to answer it. I’m not sure whether the way I see is strictly because I am Lithuanian, but thinking about it, perhaps it is.

I think my worldview is slightly less Westernised. I particularly don’t care much about material and commercial things, maybe because my generation didn’t grow up that way. It’s a long story, connected with politics, occupation and resistance and our cultural DNA. There is a certain rawness and melancholy in Lithuanian photography that I recognise in myself, an interest in ordinary life, an innate connection to nature, suffering, silence, and things that are not necessarily beautiful in a conventional way. I grew up making do with what I had around me, and I still carry that instinct with me - I need very little to make something happen.

8.

Your photographs often feel timeless, yet you move between very personal work and commissions. When you’re making work for somebody else, how do you protect that sense of mystery and intimacy without simply repeating the visual language people already associate with you?

Timeless is probably one of the best compliments I receive. 

The best commissions are the ones where there is enough trust and freedom for something unexpected to happen.

9.

You’ve said that you work slowly and intuitively, sometimes moving objects repeatedly until something simply feels right. After making images for this long, have you become better at understanding why something works - or more comfortable with not needing to know?

Probably more comfortable with not knowing, I love surprises. I just really want to see how everything looks in a photograph in different light, from a different angle, out of context, through glass, reflected, distorted, motioned, blured, all of that. I’m just curious, really. 

10.

What are you trying to become less interested in as an artist?

I am less interested in explaining everything. There seems to be this pressure to define your work, the whys and the how’s, the identity.  I’m becoming less interested in putting myself into a category. I’d rather allow myself enough freedom to change. 

(this entry follows on from DEPTH).

Fashion has always been good at showing us somewhere else.

A house we don’t live in. A life with no interruptions. A version of ourselves just out of reach. The clothes are there, but what’s really being sold is the promise that buying them might move us a little closer.

I understand the appeal of aspiration. I’m just less interested in making it the centre of Mamnick.

The older I get, the more I want to use what is around us. The people, buildings and places that have shaped the work in the first place.

That might mean photographing a jacket in a Sheffield factory, among the machines and the people who know how things are made. It might mean a South Yorkshire bus stop, or the edge of a Sunday league football field. Places most of us pass without thinking twice.

They don’t need to stand in for somewhere more desirable. They deserve to be looked at in their own right.

For years, fashion has borrowed the appearance of ordinary life while removing almost everything ordinary from it. A factory becomes a backdrop. A street becomes an aesthetic. The people who belong there disappear from the picture.

I don’t want to do that. From the start, Mamnick has been about real stories and real places - If we photograph in these places, I want the work to carry some sense of them: their use, their weather, their particular light. The fact that life goes on there after we’ve packed the camera away.

Artificial Intelligence has made it possible to produce almost anything we can describe. That has made me think more carefully about the ones we choose to make. Where was this taken? Who was there? What happened just outside the frame? All that still means something.

More than ever, perhaps it's so important that we should show people what is real? 

There’s a phrase for working this close to home: hyperlocalism. It sounds more deliberate than it feels. Mostly it means going back, meeting people, noticing something you missed last time. A place you know well can still surprise you if you give it enough attention.

That was the thought behind DEPTH. You don’t have to keep looking further away to find something worth showing. You can go deeper into the place you already know.

Mamnick comes from Sheffield. The clothing is part of that, but so are the workshops, the cycling routes, the bus stops, the football pitches and the people we’ve come to know over the years. I want our imagery to make room for all of it.

There is enough here.

What do you think?

This Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett

Pip is a British photographer, writer and director whose work has taken him from intimate portraiture to narrative filmmaking.

After years spent telling stories within a single frame, his practice has increasingly moved towards what exists beyond it - performance, writing, collaboration and the emotional architecture of a scene.

With his first feature film now taking shape, it felt like an interesting moment to talk.

For the latest in our Ten Questions series, I wanted to ask Pip about photography and filmmaking, working with actors, giving up control, trusting collaborators and what happens when people have to learn to see you in a different creative context.

1.

After spending so much of your career telling stories in a single frame, what did filmmaking offer that photography couldn’t?

A richer set of storytelling tools. Film gives you more ways into an emotion. A great photograph can stop you in your tracks, but a great film can get under your skin and stay with you for a lifetime. 

2.

When you’re directing a scene, are you still instinctively looking for the frame, or have you had to unlearn that? 

The instinct is still there, but I try to resolve the frame beforehand. Once we’re shooting, I’m much more interested in the performance and emotional architecture of the scene - the frame becomes secondary to the life inside it.

3.

As a photographer, you’re used to making the image yourself. On TWAIN, what was it like communicating that vision through a cinematographer?

I find it liberating. We speak the same visual language, so there’s a shorthand from the beginning. It gives us both freedom - the cinematographer can bring their own instincts, I can stay with the actors and the story, and somewhere between the two we find the image. 

4.

What has photographing so many actors taught you about directing them? 

That the best work happens when actors feel safe. Give them space to try things and permission to fail, and that’s where you find something extraordinary. My job is to create that environment and let them know I have their back. 

5.

You’ve spoken about photography being quite solitary, while filmmaking means relinquishing control and trusting other people. Has that changed the way you think about authorship? 

I don’t think of it as relinquishing control. For me, authorship is about clarity of vision, not control of every element. If the vision is clear enough, collaboration can only deepen it. 

6.

TWAIN feels darker and more psychologically charged than your photography. Does filmmaking let you explore something creatively that photography hadn’t? 

Filmmaking has given me a wider language for the things I’m interested in. My first feature filters the world of photography through a character’s psychology, so it feels like a convergence of everything I’ve lived and learned as a visual artist and storyteller. 

7.

After years of being established as a photographer, what is it like to be perceived as a beginner in film? 

I’ve been making films for as long as I’ve been taking photographs, so creatively I don’t feel like a beginner. What’s new is asking people to see me in a different context. That shift is exciting - and I’m looking forward to letting the work make the case for me. 

8.

Photography observes the world; filmmaking builds one. Has moving between the two changed how you see through a stills camera? 

Filmmaking has made me more aware that every photograph is really a fragment of something larger. 

9. 

Do photography and filmmaking demand fundamentally different ways of seeing? 

Photography taught me to look for the image; filmmaking taught me to look beyond it. In a photograph, light can carry the whole frame. In film, no amount of visual beauty can replace strong writing and performance. 

10.

What are you trying to become less interested in as an artist? 

Probably relevance itself. I’ve never been interested in trends. I’d rather make work that feels entirely my own. 

Lydia Roberts is a British artist and photographer whose work moves between photography, painting and drawing.

There’s a dreamlike quality to her photographs - bodies, light and familiar places become slightly ambiguous, as though you’re looking at something half remembered rather than something directly observed.

I’ve admired Lydia’s work for some time, particularly the way she seems less interested in documenting what something looks like and more interested in what it feels like.

For the second in our Ten Questions series, I wanted to ask Lydia about instinct, memory, making images that resist time, and what happens when photography and painting begin to inform one another.

1.

You've spoken about wanting to make images that feel unaffected by time. What is it about a photograph being recognisably now that you find yourself wanting to escape from?

It’s the signage, the cars, the smart watches, the AirPods. All of these seem so ugly to me. Perhaps they make our lives more ‘convenient’, but visually, they distract from what I’m actually interested in — the people or the environment.

2.

The human form appears constantly in your work, but often partially - obscured, reflected, cropped or almost disappearing into the image. Are you interested in the person themselves, or more in what the body can become within a picture?

I’m more interested in surprising myself! I think when I’m shooting a person, objects, light, reflective surfaces, etc., can all join forces and create something unexpected. Of course, there are certain faces that demand, for whatever reason, to be seen in their full glory. But I’m all about feeding curiosity.

3.

You've described being fascinated by light since childhood - even looking directly into the sun to experience the colours and shapes it created. Do you think you're still trying to recreate that feeling when you make photographs now?

Well, I try not to stare into the sun too much these days. (Apart from the solar eclipse the other week. I panicked at all the articles popping up on my feed about going permanently blind, but I seem to be ok!?) Light has become a little more mechanical now, at least my understanding of natural light. So I’m trying to force myself into new situations with light, like shooting at night or with very little light. It’s so easy to get stuck on something you know.

4.

Your photographs often seem to sit somewhere between something witnessed and something remembered. How important is memory to the way you see?

I don’t consciously think about memory as I’m shooting. The way I see feels more in line with witnessing. I like the idea that I’m noticing something in this moment that will later turn into a memory. But really, I’m mostly wrapped up in the image, and what it looks like.

5.

You work across photography, painting and drawing. Has painting changed the photographs you make - perhaps allowing you to become less concerned with what a photograph is supposed to look like?

Perhaps yes. I’m always thinking in terms of images — what makes a good one. I rarely think about what a photograph is supposed to look like — in fact, I’m not sure I have ever thought about that! From a technical standpoint, if someone were to inspect my work or the way I work — they’d probably find many flaws and incongruencies. But it’s the final image that counts, that’s what we are left to look at.

6.

There's often something deliberately unresolved in your pictures - reflections, movement, things seen through glass, moments where you're not quite sure what you're looking at. What interests you about withholding information from the viewer?

Probably because I’m not so sure what I’m looking at myself! Sometimes when I’m looking through my images after I’ve taken them, I’m genuinely shocked because I have no idea what I’m looking at. So it’s not necessarily an intentional withholding.

On the other hand, there are times when I’ll use these devices to deliberately block the viewer — why, I’m not always sure! I’d probably have to lie down on a couch to find out.

7.

You live and work in the South of France, away from the constant activity of a major art or fashion city. Do you think living somewhere quieter has changed what you notice - or perhaps protected the way you work?

Yeah, I’m essentially living in a wad of bubblewrap here. Every now and then I have to go pop myself in London or Paris, but honestly, I’m much happier here. I’d say 98% of my attention can go into the work itself, and 2% (or probably more, actually) sadly gets diluted by platforms like Instagram.

8.

You've said that you're always observing, even when you don't have a camera. Do you think being a photographer eventually changes your relationship with ordinary life - that you begin collecting pictures in your head even when you aren't making them?

Yes, I wish I was told that before I started! There should be some sort of warning.

As for collecting images, I’m not so sure it’s that — but more a kind of surveillance. I tend to fixate on faces or tiny details and, by just looking, sometimes that’s enough. It could emerge in a photo 10 years later!

9.

Your work has crossed into publications, fashion, album artwork and commercial commissions without losing its identity. When somebody is paying you to make an image, how do you protect the instinctive part of your work from becoming too considered?

Honestly, it’s not so often that I get paid to make images! It’s not my full-time job. But, when I do, I don’t change anything about the way that I shoot. Of course, I respond to a brief and that’s different from my normal way of working — but it allows me to exercise my imagination and come up with ideas. Which, actually, I don’t feel like I do day to day. It’s normally about documenting what is already there. I have nearly 20 years of making images behind me now, so my creative instinct has had enough time to form and be ready to go in whatever circumstance I find myself in. That’s quite a wonderful feeling, actually.

10.

You've been making photographs since you were a teenager. After spending that long looking, what are you trying to become less interested in as an artist?

Less interested in what people I don’t know are doing on Instagram.

Oliver Kolding Palm is a Swedish photographer whose work sits somewhere between observation, abstraction and diary.

His photographs have a quiet confidence to them. They never rush to explain themselves, instead asking you to spend a little longer looking.

I came across Oliver's work online recently and found myself returning to it. I wanted to ask him ten questions about photography, paying attention and learning to trust your own eye.

1.

Your photographs often feel discovered rather than constructed. When you're walking through the world, what actually makes you stop? Is it light, form, colour, or something that's harder to explain?

It’s usually instinct more than anything. Sometimes it’s the light or an expression, but most of the time I couldn’t really tell you why I stopped.

2.

Many photographers spend years trying to develop a recognisable style. Looking at your work, it already feels unmistakably yours. Was that something you consciously searched for, or did it simply appear through making enough photographs?

It happened gradually. I never sat down and thought, “this is how I want my work to look.” I just kept returning to the same process because I enjoyed it, and I suppose the style came with that.

3.

Your pictures seem comfortable with ambiguity. They rarely tell the viewer exactly what they're looking at or how they should feel. Do you actively resist explanation, or is that just a consequence of the way you photograph?

I quite like not knowing everything about a photograph myself. If it keeps me looking, I hope it’ll do the same for someone else.

4.

When you edit a body of work, what are you actually looking for? A technically strong photograph, or a picture that keeps revealing something each time you return to it?

I’m looking for the photographs that keep my attention. I don’t really mind if they’re technically imperfect, as long as they still make me curious.

5.

There seems to be a fascination with ordinary things in your work - a flower, a face, a shadow, a fragment of a room. Do you think photographers train themselves to notice differently, or were you always someone who paid attention?

I think the more photographs you make, the more you realise that ordinary things are rarely that ordinary if you spend enough time looking at them.

6.

You've self-published several books in a relatively short space of time. At what point does a collection of photographs stop being individual pictures and become a body of work?

It’s usually only obvious in hindsight. I’ll make photographs over a period of time, and eventually I notice they’re all asking the same question in different ways.

7.

Do you think photographs lose something when they're consumed one at a time on Instagram? Your work feels like it wants to be experienced slowly, almost as a sequence rather than individual images.

I think they do. Instagram is great for sharing work, but I still think photographs make more sense when they’re seen together. That’s one of the reasons I keep making books.

8.

If someone looked through your archive without knowing who made it, what would you hope they learnt about the person behind the camera?

I hope they’d think I was interested in the world around me. That’s probably the reason I picked up a camera in the first place.

9.

Do you think photographers spend too much time chasing new cameras? If somebody took away all but one body and one lens tomorrow, how much would it really change the photographs you make?

I get asked about my camera and recipes quite a lot. I’ve always found that a bit odd. They’re just tools. If I only had one camera and one lens tomorrow, I don’t think the photographs would change very much.

10.

You've achieved a great deal very quickly—books, exhibitions and publications before turning thirty. What are you trying to become less interested in as a photographer?

Validation, I suppose. It’s nice when people respond to the work, but I don’t think it’s a very good reason to keep making it.

There's a quiet pressure today to know a little about everything.

A new book. A new podcast. A new camera. A new city. Another opinion. Every day arrives with another invitation to move on before we've properly arrived. The internet has made us incredibly familiar with the world. We recognise more people, places and ideas than any generation before us.

But familiarity isn't the same as understanding. Real understanding has always demanded something unfashionable - Time. Not simply looking, but looking again. The same road in different weather. The same author read for a second time. The same craft repeated until instinct quietly replaces instruction. The things that stay with us are rarely the newest things - they're the things we've returned to.

The older I get, the less interested I become in travelling to make photographs. I'm far more interested in discovering what I've been walking past for the last fifteen years (although I this may have been pushed onto me thanks to my current duties!) It's a strange thing to realise, that the streets you've taken for granted can still surprise you - that familiar light can fall differently. That an ordinary wall can become extraordinary if you stop walking long enough to notice it.

Perhaps places don't become exhausted but perhaps our attention does.

I think the same is true of people. And books. And music. And work.

The deepest friendships aren't built through constant novelty. They're built through years of shared experience. The books that shape us are often the ones we return to decades later. The songs we never tire of reveal something different depending on who we are when we hear them. and it's 'Depth' asks us to stay.

Photography has taught me that. Not because it rewards travelling further. But because it I think it rewards seeing better. The photographers I admire rarely became interesting by constantly searching for new subjects. Many returned to the same families, streets, landscapes - year after year. Their photographs became richer because their relationship with those places became richer. They weren't collecting images and moving on, they were building a conversation.

Looking back, I realise that's probably why Mamnick has never chased trends. For nearly fifteen years I've kept returning to the same ideas. British manufacturing. Japanese craftsmanship. Sheffield. Steel. Cloth. Objects that improve through use rather than novelty.

From the outside that might look repetitive but to me, it feels like paying attention. Each product isn't an attempt to reinvent the last one. It's another conversation with the same ideas. Another opportunity to understand them a little better.

We're often told that breadth is intelligence and that consuming more means understanding more but I'm no longer convinced. A meaningful life isn't built by touching everything - It's built by returning, again and again, until the ordinary begins to reveal itself. The rarest thing today isn't information. It's meaning.

And perhaps meaning has always belonged to those willing to stay with something long enough to discover its depth.

What do you think?

This Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett

People often ask how Mamnick began.

The truth is, it didn't begin with a business plan. It began with curiosity.

I was interested in clothing long before I understood business. I loved (and collected) British-made outdoor garments, military surplus, cycling jerseys, workwear and the stories hidden inside well-made objects. At the same time I was becoming obsessed with photography, art + design, and the places that shaped the way people lived.

Looking back, I wasn't trying to build a company. I was simply trying to make a life around the things I couldn't stop thinking about and doing. Starting a brand became the only way I knew how. For years I thought that would be enough.

If you make honest work, people will find it. If you care enough, it'll somehow work itself out but the reality is rather different. Making something is only part of the job. The rest is persuasion. Marketing. Photography. Social media. Cash flow. The algorithm. Advertising. Conversion rates.

There are weeks where I've spent more time looking at website analytics than I have thinking about fabrics and days where I'm writing emails instead of designing products. Moments where I've questioned whether the whole thing is worth continuing at all. Nobody really tells you that when you decide to turn your passion into your livelihood. They tell you to follow your heart. They don't tell you that your heart eventually has to learn bookkeeping! 15 years on, I’m still going - but with more mouths to feed! 

The strange thing is, I don't think I'm naturally suited to running a business. I'm too stubborn. Not in an argumentative way. Creatively stubborn. Once I believe something should exist, it's incredibly difficult for me to change it simply because somebody tells me it'll sell better.

I've watched trends come and go. I've watched brands reinvent themselves every few years in search of attention. I've watched people build businesses around algorithms they don't control. I've never really wanted to do any of that and not because I think I'm right, simply because I don't think I'd recognise the work afterwards.

People often say you have to separate creativity from commerce. I've never believed that. I think the two should live together. The problem comes when commerce starts making all the creative decisions. Once that happens, the work slowly stops belonging to you.

Maybe that's why the Journal has become such an important part of Mamnick. It asks nothing of me except honesty. No launch. No campaign. No conversion rate. Just an opportunity to write about the things that hold my attention in a moment. 

Photography. Clothing. Architecture. Observation. In many ways, I think these pages explain Mamnick better than the products ever could.

As I was thinking about all this recently, another thought occurred to me. One day my boys will be old enough to read these Journal entries. Perhaps they'll wonder why their dad spent so much of his life making clothes, taking photographs and writing essays that didn't always seem to make commercial sense and I hope they don't judge it by whether it made me wealthy. I hope they understand something far more important. That I followed my curiosity. That I believed paying attention mattered. That I cared enough to spend years trying to make things properly and that I was willing to accept the uncertainty that came with doing work that felt true.

Over the last fifteen years I've realised that Mamnick was never really about clothing. Clothing simply became the medium. It's always been about paying attention and following ideas - trying to make honest work. Remaining curious enough to keep learning and stubborn enough to keep believing that your own way of seeing the world has value.

I don't know if this way of working is the easiest. It probably isn't.

I don't know if it'll ever make me wealthy. It probably won't.

But I'd rather spend twenty years building something that feels true than five years building something that no longer feels like mine.

Perhaps that's what Mamnick has really become. Not a fashion brand. A place where I get to follow my curiosity. Everything else is simply what keeps the lights on.

If my boys ever read this years from now, I hope that's what they take away. Not that they should start a clothing brand. Not that creativity is easy. Simply that if there's something they can't stop thinking about - something that keeps pulling them towards it - they should have the courage to follow it. 100%. Whatever the outcome.

Because making a life that feels like your own is sometimes the greatest success of all.

What do you think?

The Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett

There was a time when I thought I'd end up working in fine art. Instead, I quietly walked away.

It wasn't because I'd stopped enjoying making work. It wasn't because I'd lost interest in visual culture. It was because I became increasingly disillusioned with the language that seemed to surround it.

Every exhibition appeared to be exploring the relationship between something and something else. Memory and place. Identity and materiality. Landscape and belonging.

I realised I was spending more time reading statements than looking at the work and, somewhere along the line, I began to feel that learning the language was becoming more important than learning to see.

Of course, there are artists whose writing genuinely deepens their work. But too often it felt as though the explanation had become more important than the object, photograph or installation itself. I found myself wondering whether the work would still hold my attention if you removed the paragraph beside it.

That was never the kind of maker I wanted to become.

I've always believed that the strongest work doesn't arrive demanding to be understood. It doesn't need permission or justification. It simply exists, confident enough to let people bring their own experiences to it.

A few evenings ago I found myself photographing a striped plant outside somebody's front garden. Later it was the reflection on the handle of a parked car. Then a single rose catching the last of the day's light against a window.

None of them were remarkable - they weren't symbols or metaphors. I wasn't exploring the relationship between nature and the built environment or investigating ideas around memory, domesticity or time - they simply held my attention for a moment. Maybe that's enough.

In fact, perhaps that's where the best work begins. Not with an explanation, but with observation. I've always admired photographers who trusted their pictures. The image came first. Any meaning arrived afterwards, often differently for every person who looked at it. They understood that mystery isn't a weakness. It's an invitation.

The same applies to well-made objects. A good chair doesn't need a manifesto. A well-cut jacket doesn't become interesting because somebody wrote five hundred words about it.

The work has to earn the words, not the other way round.

We're surrounded by things that ask to be admired before they've proved themselves. Every launch is accompanied by an essay. Every object arrives carrying the weight of its own explanation. Perhaps we've forgotten that people are perfectly capable of deciding what something means for themselves.

I've never wanted Mamnick to work like that.

If a photograph makes somebody pause, that's enough. If a shirt becomes more beautiful years after it was made, that's enough. If the evening light changes the way you see something you've walked past a hundred times, that's enough. Not everything needs translating.

Sometimes the most honest thing a maker can do is trust the work, step aside and let people look.

What do you think?

The Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett

There has never been a better time to look at photographs. Or a worse time.

Every day we're shown beautifully lit interiors, immaculate clothing, perfect coffee, mountain roads, old Land Rovers, watches, portraits, architecture, ceramics and landscapes. None of it is particularly difficult to find anymore - just open your phone and it's all there within seconds.

The standard has become incredibly high. The problem is that volume has risen even faster.

We're consuming more images in a day than we used to in months. By lunchtime you've probably seen enough "great" photography to fill a gallery wall. After a while, even genuinely good work begins to blur into everything else. It's not because the photographs aren't good - It's because we've forgotten how to really look.

The internet promised endless inspiration. Instead it often feels like endless consumption. We scroll from one image to the next, giving each one barely enough time to register before moving on. The next image has already arrived. Then another. Then another. Nothing has time to settle.

I sometimes wonder whether we've confused collecting references with developing taste. Saving images isn't the same as understanding them. Knowing what looks good isn't the same as knowing why it looks good.

Perhaps that's why so much of what we see now feels strangely familiar. The references are shared. The colours are shared. The compositions are shared. Eventually everyone arrives at roughly the same place - not because people lack talent, but because they're all looking in the same direction.

Recently, I've found myself becoming less interested in making images that shout and more interested in making images that simply ask you to stop for a moment. The world hasn't become less interesting. We've just become accustomed to looking past it.

Perhaps the antidote to saturation isn't making louder work. Perhaps it's paying closer attention and attention might be one of the rarest things we have left.

What do you think?

The Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words & photo by Thom Barnett and Craig Fleming