Era to era with Beezer

“I started working on Until Now just over a year ago, and now it’s almost our publishing date. The reason I chose that for the title is quite self-explanatory – I wanted to present my work from the beginning, in 1982, where it all started back in Bristol to the present day. The last volume will contain an image I take on the day it goes to the printers, showing the continuing journey of my photography.”

“The whole sound system scene back then was phenomenal. We were going out every night to parties and music events, and the whole social scene was about weed, clothes and music. Everyone like The Wild Bunch – Grantley [Marshall] and Miles [Johnson], and Nellee [Hooper] as well, who I knew from back in the punk days in Barton Hill – was just growing up and exploring, and I was documenting it.”

“I first started photography in 1982, after I borrowed a friend’s camera and went on an audio-visual course at Brunel Tech. But it wasn’t until I was given a Nikon FE on my 18th that things really changed for me. I started documenting what was going on around me in the music scene and The Wild Bunch era. That led me to getting a job as Venue magazine’s music photographer and contributing to NME and Black Echoes, capturing the essence of the sound system and DJ scene. I’ve gone through turbulence in my life like everyone else, but the images and the documenting of events always stay with me.”

“I am constantly digging through my archives because these images are like an extension of my body. I have about 180,000 images just on my phone, let alone in my archives of negatives and files on computers. It’s quite emotional looking back as I am seeing many people who have now passed away captured in their prime, doing what they were great at doing. But I do find it really positive to reminisce on those days and how we all lived, and how things have changed, like the underground becoming mainstream.”

“It’s not just images that I look back fondly on. It’s an event or a person that the image captures. Images of Ari Up and of Mark Stewart, in particular, would be counted as those. When Ari had her kids, she had just returned from Jamaica and she was deciding what direction to go with her music. We would try lots of different outfits and ideas, and it was usually done on the fly, but it was a great time. These people were my heroes, and it was quite surreal that they had become great friends of mine.”

“My advice to any young photographer would be to capture everything around you and not take anything for granted as the time, people or the event might become a key event, even if you don’t realise it then. Young photographers should stick at it, forget filters and get back to the pure essence of photography, composition and the image. People have wrinkles – capture it all.”

“For me, my career will never be said and done. Until Now is exactly that – until this moment and then the next. Images are timeless. They last and this is all part of an eternal cycle.”