‘A gust of wind blowing back her hair added something special’: Mark McEvoy’s best phone picture

It was very cold and the young smoker was barelegged, barefoot and wearing a fur coat … How could the photographer resist?

This Margate shop is now an ice-cream parlour, but back in 2014 it was a vintage clothes store. Mark McEvoy, who had relocated from London the previous year with his partner and baby daughter, approached the young woman to ask permission to take this shot.

“I remember it being a very cold October day, so I was surprised she was barelegged and barefoot,” he says. “My guess is that she was working in the shop, or maybe a friend of someone working there. The fur coat may even have been for sale inside, just something she put on to keep warm during a cigarette break.”

McEvoy didn’t notice the blond-haired, barelegged mannequin in the window until he stepped back. “A gust of wind blowing back her hair and her pose added something special,” he notes.

In more recent years, McEvoy has been scanning and collating his 40-year archive of photographs, and reflecting on his work across various devices and formats; a range of iPhone models but also analogue cameras, both 35mm and medium format. “I am a bit of a purist, inspired by the documentary tradition of cropping in the frame when you take the photo. So, rather than say to myself, ‘I can crop that out in post’, I’ll move physically closer to the subject instead,” McEvoy says.

It’s an approach he would recommend to any aspiring photographer. “These days, with AI and advanced editing software, it’s too easy to manipulate a photo, and the line between fact and fiction becomes more and more blurred.”