A furloughed bartender has been taking pictures whilst biking around during lockdown in London and has raised enough money via his Kickstarter to publish a photography book.
Jimmy Brimmacombe, 27, from west London started taking photos when he was furloughed in March 2020 and his childhood friend Jordan Pollock, 26, helped him assemble a team of friends nicknamed ‘The Furloughed Creatives’ to embark on their film project.
The team of 11 managed to turn Jimmy’s captured film into a short documentary and book called ‘Keeping Metres‘.
Before lockdown, Jimmy was working at The Westbourne pub in Notting Hill, whilst Jordan was working at a boxing promotions company.
Jordan said “We’ve never made a film or anything like that before. Jimmy’s barely been a photographer for very long.
“We kind of bounced around the idea of making a film to see what happens, even though we don’t know what we’re doing.
“We’ve actually had some cool support from some celebrities like Ian Wright and Kara Tointon.
“The main intention was to make the book but we also want to exhibit Jimmy’s work.
“He’s been my mate my whole life so I wanted to try and give him some support to help push his photography out there.
“Hopefully someone will have some faith in us to do an actual exhibition.
“Columbia has said that they want to exhibit some of Jimmy’s photography but obviously we’ve done this whole project without a budget so if we want to exhibit photographs then we have to pay to print them.”
The Kickstarter for Jimmy’s book went live a year and one day after the first lockdown was announced on 24 March.
Jimmy said: “The people I try to select to photograph are interesting and have something to say.
“I’ve met so many different people as I’m always out on my own.
“I would generally cycle from Maida Vale to Edgware Road to Marble Arch to Oxford Street and I did that route probably 200 times during the first lockdown.”
The 11 furloughed friends in the production team included; a cinematographer, animator, colourist, web designer and production manager.
All of the creatives volunteered and there was no budget or spending for the project.
The Kickstarter has now surpassed its target goal of £5,550.
When the fundraiser expires on Thursday, Jimmy and Jordan will be selling their book on the ‘Keeping Metres’ website and have already released their short documentary style film on YouTube.
Featured Image Credit: Jimmy Brimmacombe
