Webb’s first photographic pieces were exhibited in 1976 and explored a world derived from his own early apprehension of attitudes within British society, an obsessions with games and gambling, a reverence for the trickster as the lateral thinker of society. The works made at that time were mostly photographed on exterior locations, generally consisting of several images accompanied by a text which proposed a narrative commentary on the situations pictured – situations whose internal logic was impeccable but whose realism was illusory. Later work continued a narrative mode but the images became progressively more artificed, the texts dwindled to captions suggesting readings of situations which nonetheless remain forever enigmatic. His work built on the acceptance of photography as the medium of truth, engaging our belief in situations he creates only to lead us away into areas which confound rational explanation. The Telephone is typical of this manic dualism, an opposition of elements poised forever at the moment of resolution.