How Elie N’Guessan makes everyday London look like a movie

Elie N'Guessan picked up a camera while studying Product Design at Central Saint Martins. Two years on, the Peckham-born photographer has built a portfolio of fashion, editorial and commercial work, with magazine features and exhibitions along the way. His pictures depict crowds spilling out of cars, models dangling from climbing frames and figures sitting against concrete walls, all lit with a richness that makes South East London look like a movie.

For Elie, photography began as a welcome escape. "I was finding university difficult, and photography became something I really enjoyed doing outside my degree," Elie says. "It also helped me become more confident socially and meet people I probably wouldn't have met otherwise." His friends soon noticed, too. "I became known as the guy who was always carrying a camera, and I realised I wanted to take photography further."

His influences include photographer Gabriel Moses and creatives like Cashmere, and he talks about them in terms of a feeling he chases in his own frames. "I like work that feels cinematic but still has something real about it," he says. "There's so much going on around London, from the people and different cultures to the way people dress. Sometimes an idea can come from something as simple as a conversation with a friend." After each shoot, he prints his images and scans them again, letting the paper add dust and grain. "I like the texture and imperfections it creates because I don't want everything to look too clean or perfect."

A recent shoot, Dobs on the Back Seat, shows how that approach works for a brand. Made as a spec project for Adidas, it packs a group of models in tracksuits into a car doorway against a coral-red wall, with the three stripes glowing in the corner. "I wanted to approach sportswear photography in a more cinematic way," Elie explains. "I used an everyday setting to create something that felt different from a typical sportswear campaign. It was also a chance to experiment with the kind of commercial work I'd love to do more of."

God Helps Us All sits at the more personal end of his practice. A young woman sits hunched against a weathered concrete wall, a small cross hanging above her head. "This project is about my relationship with faith and a time in my life when I struggled with finding a sense of purpose," he says. "I was using different things to distract myself and numb the emptiness I was feeling. The forward gaze and empty background reflect that feeling of searching for something more, and how my relationship with God fits into that journey."

Then there was Daycare's Over, a shoot that rewrote itself that day. Elie had booked two models for a test, and four curious kids wandered over to watch. "They were nosy, playful and a bit cheeky, but really funny to be around," he remembers. During a break, an idea arrived.

"I used the football crossbar as a set, letting the kids play around while the models acted like exhausted after-school club workers who'd been doing unpaid overtime. It was completely unplanned, but it ended up becoming one of my favourite sets of photographs." The resulting frames show everyone swinging from a bar in front of a blue brick wall, and they hold more warmth than most campaigns manage. "Some of my favourite pictures have come from moments I didn't plan."

There's a sense of spontaneity that runs through Elie's work, even when a shoot is carefully planned. He prefers to keep things relaxed, giving people room to move and experiment in front of the camera. "I want people to feel comfortable in front of the camera. I also like experimenting with poses and movement," he says. "I like making people look twice at things they might normally overlook, whether that's a person, a location or the way someone dresses."

In the future, Elie wants to work with more photographers, stylists, magazines and brands, and to keep mapping London through portraiture. He'd also love to travel further afield, although the cost is proving something of an obstacle.

"I'm too skint right now to travel to new parts of the UK, because a train ticket costs an arm and a leg, but I'm trying to make it work," he says. "Ultimately, I want to keep improving, experiment with new ideas and develop a style that people can recognise as my own."