Smith originally studied Fine Art, between 1991 and 1995 at Coventry University and as part of his course he undertook a research project into contemporary art which included living on an Aboriginal reserve for four months. After completing his degree at Coventry he completed a Masters degree in Photography at the Royal College of Art. During this time he examined the meaning and construction of masculinity, concentrating on the cultural and visual creation of various alpha male identities.Most of Paul Smith’s photography depicts scenes from British male culture. There’s a cartoonish, theatrical element to it enhanced by the fact that all the men in each set of themed work are the same man, created through the tricks of digital photography.

In another series of photographs, the project on which has inspired me to create my photo boo., Make My Night, Smith depicts the excesses of a boy’s night out. In one, set in a pub, a man sits at a table cluttered with empty beer glasses, in front of a dart board, with a condom pulled down over his face down to his upper lip. Next to him, another man clutching a beer laughing while on the other side another man aims a lit cigarette at the tip of the condom. Of course, all three men are the same man, presumably Smith himself. In the next image, the boys are back at someone’s house, posing for the camera. The central figure holds a cucumber out from his crotch, leaning backwards, while another man, cigarette in one hand, kneels down and theatrically puckers up kissing the cucumber. Behind them, one man stands on a couch, clutching his beer, smiling at the camera and another man grimaces at the camera, wearing a union jack plastic hat. The fact that all these men are the same man is more striking in this image, making it both funny and disorienting.

Some of this has echoes of the work of Martin Parr, the documentarian of British life shot in garish colors. the drunken excesses of night life, the exercises of army troops, the crowd dynamics of soccer games, or the action hero of the movies. But Smith’s work is consciously artistic in its manipulation of the image, and the extremely posed nature of every shot. He is showing some of the stereotypes of masculinity, examining them with  a sense of fun and explicit nature.