Whether he’s capturing the frenzied movements of musicians performing on stage or portraits using a DIY vortoscope lens to reflect and refract light, Max Dillon’s photography retains a poetic depth. Utilising shadowplay and angles, Dillon plays with perspective, imbuing each image with dynamic meaning – it makes complete sense that it was a Robert Mapplethorpe photo book that made Dillon pick up a camera.

Name: Max Dillon

Age: 23

Location: Kent

Camera of choice: Someone else’s. It might be the change of perspective I enjoy, but more likely the delusion that there’s always a better camera out there.

Preferred subject: Musicians on a stage. I’ve always loved live music, so taking photos never feels like work.

Favourite time of the day to shoot: Morning.

Most recent photo you took: A funeral flotilla sailing out to sea to scatter the ashes of a fallen seaman.

How you first became interested in photography: I stumbled across a Robert Mapplethorpe photobook in a library whilst I was at school and it turned my brain inside out.

Biggest influence: Wolfgang Tillmans has always been an inspiration with his diversity of output, whilst always keeping politics firmly in the conversation around his work.

Favourite photography series/book: Laia Abril’s On Abortion: And the Repercussions of Lack of Access. The best art is functional, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more important function than to educate in the way Abril does.

Current project/s: I’ve been experimenting with photographic vorticism for a few years now, using my own DIY vortoscope (an awkward contraption of tape and mirrors over a lens). I’ve always been fascinated by how such a beautiful practice like vorticism could be conceived by artists with ultimately fascist beliefs. I’m hoping to carry this on, just without the dodgy politics.

Follow Max Dillon on Instagram.