​The Beginning of Tandem

My creative background began long before Tandem. At school my favourite subject was always art. After my A-Levels I went on to do a foundation diploma in Art & Design at York Street art college in Belfast, followed straight after by a degree in Graphic Design (Visual Communication) at the University of Ulster in my early twenties. Then, as is traditional after spending several years getting a degree, I proceeded to do very little with it.

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On my days off a full-time job, photography started as a hobby. It then turned into something of an obsession, where I couldn't wait until my next photography trip and that hobby turned into my business now for over a decade. I’m an introverted person by nature, so photographing people or weddings was never on my radar. As I often joke, I’d rather photograph anything that doesn’t talk or move! Fortunately, landscapes and derelict buildings are very accommodating in that respect. Thus, I spent much of my spare time travelling around Ireland with my camera. My photography developed in two directions: Irish landscapes & the abandoned houses and forgotten buildings of Derelict Ireland.

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When it came to naming a business all those years ago, that's where the name Tandem came from. At the time, I didn't particularly want to call it 'Photography by Yvonne', and with these two very different strands of photography running alongside one another, Tandem seemed to fit. More than a decade later, the business has evolved considerably, but the name has stuck.

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Derelict Ireland

For many years, photographing Ireland's abandoned buildings was a huge part of what I did. I travelled the back roads searching for forgotten houses, cottages and buildings. What fascinated me wasn't simply the decay. It was the evidence of the people who had once called these places home: an old chair beside a fireplace, layers of wallpaper or everyday belongings left behind. There was something incredibly poignant about standing in a house that had once been somebody's entire world and watching nature slowly reclaim it.

 

Over time, abandoned photography became increasingly popular and I gradually became disillusioned with a genre I'd quietly spent years working in. Eventually, I felt it was time for me to move on. My Derelict Ireland archive isn't disappearing. Those photographs represent years of travelling, exploring and documenting buildings that, in many cases, may no longer even exist. They'll remain here to view and purchase and will always be an important part of the Tandem story. They're part of where I've been, they're just not where I'm heading next.

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Expanding The Range of Products

For many years, I sold my photography mainly as prints and through my annual calendar. Then, in December 2022, I decided to try something a little different and launched my own range of 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. I have always enjoyed doing jigsaws, they are a great way to relax the brain and stimulate it at the same time, so turning some of my photographs into puzzles felt like a natural progression. Up until then, I had never come across anyone producing jigsaws featuring local landscapes and landmarks, and I believe I was among the first to do so. I selected several of my favourite scenes, designed the packaging and worked closely with a specialist manufacturer to bring the idea to life. Since then, the collection has continued to grow, with new locations and designs added along the way. I hope you have enjoyed piecing together these familiar scenes as much as I have enjoyed creating them. I have also expanded my product range to include my own collection of high-quality tote bags and notebooks, all featuring my photography. I never create anything I don't love and I only create items that I'd want to purchase myself.

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Photography & Design, The Next Chapter

​My love of photographing the landscapes, landmarks and character of Ireland and Northern Ireland hasn't gone anywhere. However, after allowing that graphic design degree to gather dust for a frankly unreasonable number of years, I'm returning to my original roots in art & design and combining them with the photography I've spent all these years creating. So, going forward you'll begin to see traditional landscape photography sitting alongside illustrations of landmarks. So, rather conveniently, the name Tandem suddenly makes sense all over again. Perhaps I chose the right name after all.

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The Reality of a One-Woman Business

When I say Tandem is a small independent business, I really do mean small. There's no mysterious team behind the website. I'm the one taking the photographs and creating the designs, but I'm also cutting the mounts, making up the prints, developing new products, ordering stock, answering emails, updating the website, parcelling online orders, doing the accounts and delivering orders to the shops and stockists that sell my work. And somewhere amongst all of that, I occasionally even manage to get out and take a new photograph.

 

At weekends you'll usually find me at my stall in St. George's Market, although quite often, you'll find me in front of it rather than behind it. This is because my current pitch sits directly opposite a very busy hot food stall and, somewhere along the way, the eight feet immediately in front of my work seems to have become an unofficial food waiting area. On particularly busy days it can become a near continuous conveyor belt of people hanging about thinking about a burger / waiting for a burger / waiting for their partner who is in the queue for a burger. Unfortunately, a few lingering people can form a remarkably effective human barrier. Consequently, alongside photographer, designer, printmaker and accountant, I've inadvertently added crowd-control officer to my CV. It's certainly not a job I signed up for, but a girl's got to earn a living and pay her bills, so needs must! 

 

Some days I find it funny. Other days, after approximately the fiftieth “Sorry, would you mind just moving forward a little? You're blocking my stall...”, I'll admit my thoughts have wandered towards alternative crowd-management techniques. Water pistols have been considered. Pea shooters have been discussed. For legal reasons, neither has made it into Tandem's official business plan... as yet!

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So, when you buy something from Tandem, there really isn't a large company or production team hidden away behind the scenes. After more than a decade of putting the work itself front and centre, I thought it was probably about time I put a face to the name too.

 

So, hello, I'm Yvonne.

Photographer, designer, occasional crowd-control officer and the person behind Tandem.

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