The public enquiry into the future of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry started last week, as the Secretary of State prepares to intervene in the dispute between the developers who bought the site after it closed in 2017, and those who want to see a six hundred year old tradition of bell casting preserved in the East End. I visited it in 2003 to shoot this portrait of Polly Arnold, the managing director of a publishing company, in her couture wedding dress for a magazine feature. Casting molten metal is a dirty business and almost everything in the foundry was caked in layer of grime but the wedding dress had cost about the same as a small car and I was under strict instructions that it should not be soiled so we had to carefully conceal plastic sheeting underneath it which kept it clear of the floor…….more or less.