Lee kirby photographer biography

A stream of pictures floods the inbox – colourful portraits of a bedraggled figure in designer clothes – while an accompanying note promises to tell the story behind it all.

Photographer Lee Kirby had been working in his old studio above a menswear shop in Norwich when he spotted “the best-dressed hobo you’ve ever seen”, an eccentric art collector named Lee Trosclair.

Capturing that moment on camera developed into a two-year project to document Trosclair’s unique persona and “whole raison d’etre”.

But the note doesn’t say what that is.

You’re left to draw your own conclusions from the intense gaze, the Vivienne Westwood outfits and the aura of someone who lives outside convention. A chain of emails trying to tease out more detail only loops back to the same question: who is this mysterious figure?

It’s a balmy evening in East London when Kirby opens the door to his apartment building.

The year-old – dressed all in black,