From horse trader, scrap dealer and oil rig worker to photographer – how Hull’s George Norris broke the mould

Professional photographer George Norris comes from a long line of Hull-based horse traders and scrap collectors and currently has an exhibition in Hull’s HU3 gallery of his photographs which were taken on a trip to Appleby Horse Fair last year. After hearing about his exhibition, the Travellers’ Times caught up with George to find out more.

“I come from a three generations of horse traders,” says George Norris. “My great granddad had horses, and then my granddad brought horses back from France after the Second World War because the country was depleted of horses,” adding that his father was one of six brothers.

At the time when George’s (George Edward Norris) was a young man, the ways of making a living for a working-class man in the port of Hull were limited – and many worked in the fishing industry, but Georges grandma was against her sons going out on the fishing boats because of the dangers and the regular loss of life among the fisherman of Hull’s fishing fleet.

“So, my grandad and brothers they all got away from the fishing and started collecting scrap,” says George.

VIDEO: Watch a one minute You Tube video about George Norris and George Edward Norris and the scrap collecting business in Hull:

“My dad's 85 now, he's lost all his brothers, he started off at 13 years old collecting cardboard, saved up enough money for a horse and has been a rag and bone man all his life,” adds George.

“I did it for a short period myself, when I first left school from the age of seventeen to twenty.”

George adds that his brother still breeds horses – and collects scrap - but that his dad retired two years ago.

“We have 70 acre field nearby, called the common – but it’s not a common and people own it – but my dad has been paying a peppercorn rent for 40 years, and that's allowed him to breed horses on there,” says George.

Yet, although starting with his dad in the scrap collecting game, George then started working on the oil and gas rigs in the North Sea, which was a regular wage plus, because of the on-off shift work, also allowed time for George to indulge in his newfound hobby – that of documentary photography, which was first inspired by finding a box of old family photos belonging to his mum and dad.

George is completely self-taught, his first camera was the old Olympus M10 workhorse – first a film version and then digital - and over the course of 17 years, photography has become more than a hobby.

“I thought every time I come back to Hull from working on the rigs, I'm seeing changes in the city,” says George, explain how his passion for photography just grew and grew.

“So, I just started taking photographs with no intention to do anything with them - just put them in my archive if you like,” adds George.

“I just started playing with my Olympus and documenting street life where I live, the scrap yards and collectors, the rigs, the helicopter pilots and the choppers landing and then it, all of a sudden, I've got 80,000 pictures in my archive.”

It was a reconnection with professional photographer Russell Boyce, who had photographed him and his dad collecting scrap when George was only 19, that was the turning point of George's own hobby off photography becoming more of a profession and career, and George is now often working on paid assignments practising his new trade of photography.

In 2024 George was funded by the Arts Council to photograph a trip to Appleby Horse Fair, setting off from Hull pulling two horses in horse boxes, one of which his brother Carl was intending to sell at the fair, and a cart. Some of the trip was made on the cart pulled by one of the horses, while the other vehicles went on ahead.

Most of the photography for the Arts Council project can be seen at George’s new exhibition ‘Untethered’ at HU3 at the Western Library, Boulevard, Hull.

“Sunday is when I took the majority of the pictures,” says George. “There's the River Eden, and then the flash and the market, and I managed to capture that lot in six hours.”

Also, at the HU3 gallery is ‘A Gypsy Childhood’, which is an exhibition showing George’s photographs of the Traveller families that often visit Hull. George has been documenting a few families over the years, including the Price’s from Wales who travel spring to autumn from their base in Wales, and who have only recently pulled on to a disused piece of land in Hull.

George has known the Price family for five years and visits them – and takes their photographs – every time they pull into Hull.

“There’s Rosie Price and she's the mother of 14 children and the family usually arrives in Hull around May, on their way to Appleby,” says George.

“We reconnect for a cup of tea and a catch up and I document her kids again, and they're a year older,” adds George.

“All the children, barring two, have all flown the nest and they've got their own kids. They are all working and doing the best they can for themselves.”

“They're allowed two weeks on there, and then they're on the way,” says George, adding that the local city council has a better attitude to Travellers than some, but that the Travellers and council officials still “play cat and mouse,” until eventually the Travellers move on.

“The camp is a stone’s throw from where I live, it’s a disused cemetery, with maybe 20 old headstones, but a really big space, and the Travellers come every year,” says George.

Words and interview by Mike Doherty for the Travellers Times

(Top photograph: A young George Norris at Appleby in 1994 © Brett Hambling)

Untethered – a photographic exhibition by George Norris

May 4th to July 30th. 2025

Opening times

Monday 1-6 /Tuesday 9-1.30 /Thursday 1-6 /Saturday 10-1

At HU3, Western Library, 254 Boulevard, Hull, HU3 3ED

The exhibition is free, but a book of photographs from Untethered can be purchased here: UNTETHERED - Mixam