Brian Downie

I'm a photographer living and working in Paris. I photograph gigs, musicians, actors and theatre, and I work as a unit stills photographer on film sets. My eye is drawn to the unguarded moment — the saxophonist mid-breath, the actor between takes, the roadie in the wings nobody's watching.

I grew up in Glasgow, where my uncle ran a record shop and my first camera was a hand-me-down Pentax loaded with whatever film was in the drawer. I've been in Paris for eleven years now, shooting the city's live rooms and stages — from the sweaty basement clubs of Belleville to the velvet of the Opéra Bastille.

I shoot mostly on a Leica M6 and a Hasselblad 500CM, and I still develop my own black-and-white. There's a patience to film that suits the theatre — you get one frame, so you wait for the moment to come to you.