Alia

Hello! I’m a creative family and brand photographer making uplifting images to build connection. A former architect with 17 years’ photographic experience, my approach is inclusive and collaborative. My work helps to captivate and convert audiences for like-minded clients by reflecting their values and bringing creations to life. I carry out portraits & headshots; behind-the-scenes & lifestyle content; event coverage; and spatial or product photography. My portfolio includes work with designers, performers, makers, sustainable brands and entrepreneurs.

I am a multi-disciplinary artist, and freelance illustrator and designer specialising in arts education, book arts, stop-frame animation, model making, and graphic design. I am a part-time lecturer on the BA Illustration course at the University of Portsmouth in the School of Architecture, Art and Design. I run my small-press publishing platform, Micro Library Books, exhibiting at illustration fairs in the UK and internationally, and since 2001 I have co-run an arts education partnership, Borbonesa, founded with fellow artists. The arts education projects I work on often focus on wellbeing and community, such as Stories in Transit, which aims to establish the right of displaced individuals to cultural expression.

I am a visual artist who works across a range of media, originally crochet and textile but more recently in sculpture, installation and performance. I have a sensory approach to connecting to materials, most of them domestic recycled waste. I am very interested in experimentation and cross collaborations with artists from other disciplines and also outside of the field of the arts. Across the years, my practice has delved into the visual and metaphorical links between neuroscience and crochet, the cracking and transformations of womanhood after the menopause and more recently the opening and reconnecting to nature.