Guinness World Records commissioned these images to showcase record-holders and illustrate their achievements.
This kind of work sits somewhere between portraiture and illustration. The people involved already hold the records so the challenge wasn’t to document their attempts, nor to re-enact them. Instead, the aim is to create ‘show pictures’ - lively, quirky, often silly ideas - to make a story legible in a whimsical image.
The first set involved taekwondo black-belts Lisa and Chris Pitman. Among many other achievements, they’d broken records including the most pine boards broken in one minute with one hand (Lisa); the most roof tiles broken in one minute (Lisa); and the fastest time to break 1,000 roof tiles (Chris).
As they’re married, the logical angle was to have them smashing bricks in a chapel while in their wedding attire. Obviously.
The second shoot focused on Suresh Joachim, who holds more than 60 Guinness World Records (mainly endurance-based) to help underprivileged children across the world.
They include: the longest time balancing on one leg (76 hours and 40 minutes); the longest radio broadcast (120 hours); the longest dance marathon by an individual; the longest drumming marathon (84 hours), and the longest continuous crawl (56.62 km).
He also holds the record of watching films back-to-back (121 hours and 18 minutes) and to illustrate this, we photographed in a cinema, from the point of view of the screen. And although the images are playful, the process wasn’t chaotic or improvised for its own sake. There was a clear brief, planning, and collaboration on the day - with room to flex when an idea needed pushing further. We had him ‘reacting’ to horror films, comedies, and dramas. Popcorn was a useful prop: rather than just being something to hold, it can be eaten, hidden behind, and - most usefully - thrown.
This approach comes directly from my press background, where stories often have to be reduced to a single frame. Guinness World Records is an extreme version of that problem, but not an unusual one. When everything is in place - time, trust, ideas, and permission to push - the job becomes less about problem-solving and more about intent: how far an idea needs to go to be clear, and no further. It’s always a kind of storytelling - finding a way to make effort, personality and achievement visible - but without taking the subject, or the viewer, too seriously.
Below left: We then photographed him for his record of the longest time going up and down on an escalator, covering 225.44 km over a couple of days. The photography itself was much quicker, but took a number of attempts as we raced around, shooting during the quiet periods of commuters on the DLR.
Below right: Suresh also holds the record for the quickest time to reach 100 miles on a treadmill (13 hours, 42 minutes and 33 seconds).