Photographer Alan Gardner is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of these images. To see Alan ’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Alan Gardner, 51, Scotland. I’ve been interested in photography from around the age of fifteen, when I got a little plastic point and shoot camera for my birthday. Before that I’d been allowed to take a few snaps with my dad’s 110 camera, which seemed mysterious and magical, as a kid. By the time of my plastic point and shoot I was into skateboarding, and skate magazines were a big part of that, so I started taking photos of my friends and I skating and hanging out. In my later teens I was on a Youth Training Scheme (Y.T.S) which had its own photography studio and darkroom, the use of which mostly involved my friends and I mucking around, taking daft photos of ourselves, developing and printing them. Later, we went to a local college to do some basic photography classes, more formally. In my early twenties I studied Photography at college, at Higher level but didn’t complete the course. I was always interested in social documentary but hadn’t heard the term ‘Street Photography’. Photography fell by the wayside when I started working and having a family, and I didn’t come back to it for many years. Around 2010 I got a digital bridge camera and started taking photos of performers on the Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I mostly use a digital Ricoh GR for street photography. Gradually I became as interested in the ordinary people on the street, as I was in the performers. I became hooked, and as the Fringe only takes place for 3 weeks of August, I started shooting on the street whenever I could, sometimes this involved a public event, or a car boot sale in multi-story car park. Wherever there were people present. It was the people I was most interested in, and the moment in time. That’s one of the things that fascinates me about photography, time itself. We can’t travel in time, but we can freeze these little crumbs of it to look and marvel at. There is something about the still image that transports us, and tells us something about ourselves, about who were once were, and who we are. Photographs are also just nice to look at, and it can be as simple as that.