ABOUT

Marcus Rashford championed a campaign to end child food poverty last year and extend the free school meal voucher scheme. MP’s originally voted against free school meals, affecting around 1.3 million vulnerable children last summer, but thanks to the campaign lead by Marcus, the government eventually made a U-turn on their controversial and widely condemned decision.

The BBC commissioned me to create a portrait of Marcus for a documentary about his personal experience of the system, having received free school meals whilst growing up in Wythenshawe, Manchester and how he has since become an advocate and campaigner against ending child food poverty in the UK.

The concept behind the portrait was to show his thoughtful and humble empathy to a cause close to his and the nations hearts, an image many may not associate with elite football stars. The lighting was intentionally soft and directional and stylised to focus primarily on his face and eyes to capture the expression and feeling we wanted to convey, we wanted it to be subtle and as a portrait, we did not want anything in the image to distract attention form the portrait so we maintained a fairly neutral background. The resulting image was widely used across TV, news channels, print media, social media, websites and in promotional material for the documentary and one from the set was made into a large mural on the wall of a primary school in East London, further highlighting the cause and again, widely reported on news and sports TV and Print/Social media. The image was shortlisted for a Drum Photography Award this year.