Still Works is a collaboration with knife-maker Stuart Mitchell, shot at his workshop in Portland Works, a 19th Century metal trades factory in Sheffield. Rather than focusing on the sharpened and shining finished products, these images honour the erosion, scars and callouses that adorn the tools and machinery of the workshop, formed from decades of hard, unforgiving work. When combined with the enticing textures of the raw materials that will form the knives, the workshop becomes a fascinating and beguiling visual experience.

“..a series created in knife-maker Stuart Mitchell’s workshop, but the results of his labour are invisible throughout. Instead the series consists of surreal still-lifes that monumentalise the studio’s machinery and the materials of Mitchell’s trade: tangles of wiry metal shavings explode from a container; the rugged surface of a stool is covered in slashes and rips…”

“…The rich backstory is central to the series, which Deproost is adamant should ground the visually surreal work. But the ambiguity is also important, making for images that force us to contemplate what is shown – imbuing a straightforward subject with a sense of intrigue and the unknown: “It transforms something that could seem everyday, which people might pass by and ignore; the work transcends that and creates something that people will have not seen before,” says the photographer.” British Journal of Photography