Introduction
Denise Maxwell didn't choose photography, circumstances made the choice for her. She was working in NHS anti-racism training when a change of government brought austerity cuts, and the alternative role she was offered wasn't in the field she'd built her career in. It was liaising with families of the recently bereaved. That was the moment she chose herself instead, and it's the moment this episode is really about: what it takes to build something from nothing when nobody around you can show you how.
The Signs She Didn't Recognise as Signs
Growing up, before most people owned cameras, Denise was the one who borrowed her mother's camera to photograph her whole class on the last day of school. As a teenager, she carried a 35mm camera to carnivals and days out when nobody else did, and has kept, and backed up, those images for decades, still sending friends random photos from the 1990s and 2000s. Looking back, the instinct to document was always there. She just didn't recognise it as a sign at the time.
From a Women's Refuge to NHS Anti-Racism Training
Her original ambition, formed young, was to become a social worker or a lawyer. As the first person in her family to go to university, she had nobody around her who could help her navigate how to actually get into either field, so her degree in social policy and women's studies led somewhere else entirely: working with survivors of domestic abuse in a women's refuge, then delivering training on the cycle of abuse and healthy relationships, then work with young mothers, and eventually the longest role of her career, delivering anti-racism training within the NHS. She's candid that the emotional weight of that work was heavy, but a strong team, a good manager and real autonomy over her own workload kept it enjoyable, in contrast to the burnout she saw in friends doing what looked, on paper, like less demanding jobs.
The Redundancy That Redirected Everything
A change of government brought austerity cuts, and the NHS anti-racism service she worked in was an early target. Offices disappeared into a central hub, hot-desking replaced permanent desks, budgets and services were repeatedly cut, and the people who remained were expected to deliver the same work with fewer resources. When redundancies were announced, she was offered redeployment into what she calls "the death service," not debt, death: liaising with recently bereaved families. She recognised immediately it wasn't right for her, and rather than fight to stay in a role that would clearly cost her both happiness and health, she opted into redundancy instead. Before she left, her manager allowed her day release to complete a photography qualification at a local college, so by the time she walked out, she already had a foot in the door of what came next.
Betting on Herself: The Redhead Project
With no business advice and nobody in her circle running a creative business, she started small: portraits and event cover for friends and family. Then she created a self-directed project purely because she wanted to, portraits of people with red hair, and conversations about their experiences of it. That project brought her first corporate booking, from a Birmingham university marketing manager who'd sat for the project and loved the results, then grew into an invitation to shoot the Redhead Days festival in Breda in the Netherlands, and from there a paid spot on a BBC radio panel discussing redheads. None of it was planned in advance. It grew connection by connection, from a project she made simply because she wanted to make it.
Proactive, Not Passive: Putting Out the Hooks
Her core operating principle is proactiveness: put the work in, put content out, and don't wait for opportunity to come and find you. She's equally clear that visible wins hide a much larger pile of rejections and projects that, in her words, "completely flopped." Her own description of it: she puts out a lot of hooks, and only occasionally does one land. She manages rejection with a mix of small rituals, buying herself new trainers, the odd sofa-and-Netflix day, and a saved folder of messages from people she's helped or inspired, which she revisits when she needs the reminder that the work matters.
Three Lessons from a Career Built on Multiple Genres
Asked for the key lessons from her career, she offers three. Never think you're too experienced to keep learning, she still applies for courses and development programmes now. Always remember and credit the people who helped you along the way, she still credits a fellow photographer \[CHECK\] who showed her the ropes at her first major sports event, when she was one of only a handful of women, and one of very few Black photographers, in the room. And never ask anyone to do something you wouldn't do yourself, which is why she still assists other photographers even now, just as they assist her. On genre, she was told early in her career to pick one specialism and stay in it. She deliberately ignored that advice, arguing that plenty of photographers work across multiple genres but only publicly promote one, creating a false impression that specialising is the only credible route.
Defining Leadership as Something Others See in You
Closing the conversation, she resists giving a tidy definition of leadership, arguing instead that leadership is often something other people recognise in you before you recognise it in yourself: showing someone a path, or inspiring them, without that necessarily being your explicit purpose in the moment.
