With over ten years of experience as a professional photographer, Alex has worked with artists ranging from contemporary choreographer Russell Maliphant to Game of Thrones actress and contortionist Pixie Le Knot, as well as on commercial photography projects. This project takes a more intimate approach. Inspired by conversations with female friends, Alex has produced a series of portraits of women across the UK to celebrate their body shapes and interrogate the pressures placed upon them by society to adhere to dominant beauty standards.

More than 25,000 cosmetic surgery procedures were performed on women in the UK in 2025, according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. The most common was breast enlargement. It is a trend that can be traced back to the early 2000s, when reality TV, glamour modelling, and popular culture helped popularize an aesthetic that combined slim physiques with large breast implants. Although the popularity of that supersized look has waned in recent years, the pressure on women to have so-called “perfect” breasts remains.

In his portrait series Natural Beauty, Alex confronts the pressure placed on women to change their appearance in order to feel attractive. Each woman in the series shows herself at her most natural, wearing little to no makeup and simple, loose-fitting clothing. The women face the camera directly, as a sign of confidence—or perhaps a provocation toward the viewer—as if to say, “I love my body as it is.”

SELECTED – Royal Photographic Society #164, 2023 – Portrait