#20 Syd Shelton - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST - WTF-Stop Podcast - Photo Talk

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Zach Waters and welcome to another episode of
What the GEF Stop photok right chatter photographers about their
life and connection to the world through photography. Today's guest

(00:33):
is the editorial photographer Sid Shelton. Sid's journey as a
photographer has been his way of expressing his political interest.
He's wanted to ask questions. He's what he would raise
awareness with his work, whether it was working on Aboriginal
projects in Australia or his long association with Rock Against Racism.
We look back right at the beginning his art school

(00:54):
days as a painter, right through to his graphic design
work and how that played in the important part of
his life as a photographer. We discussed a number of
his publishing projects, in particular his book The Falls, published
by for the Books, which documents his time in Northern
Ireland covering the troubles.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
But I did go twice, and I went on that
long journey up to Scotland and from Stranra to land
Ferry and then the train to Belfast. And I had
no money at that time. All my money went on
film and I think I took probably twenty rolls of
film in total on Boath journeys, but I wanted to
go along and photographed in Republican areas because that was

(01:36):
where the venom of the anti Irish racism was really directed.
They were being vilified people, Republican people and people of
West Belfast were being demonized in this country as been
absolutely evil.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Who went right back to the beginning and talked about
his time working with the Aboriginal community in Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
New South Wales Builders Labor Federation, which I'd done photographs
of quite a bit. We're getting involved in trying to
force the labor governments with them governments into transforming a
whole block of houses as terrace houses into a housing
cooperative for urban Aboriginal people, and they were successful.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
But I went down there. I think I was the only.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Photographer whoever went down there and photographed these people and
who lived there, and.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
That of course, we have to talk about the clash
and rock against racism.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
And Bernie Road strangers up and said, look, my boys
want to do it. Come we have a chat. So
they came round to Red Studio and read and I
met with them the whole of the clash and they
were totally up for it. But Bernie was he was
on another planet. I tell you, he was going, well,
I'll let my boys do it if you use the

(02:51):
money you make to buy a tank for Zimbabwe.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
So the day came and I was really excited to
have a chat with them and sit down and choose
some could and it was quite a funny interview. A
few things happened, but you'll find out who you listen.
So the day came and I asked him what he
was up to.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh God, so many things. I'm up to as usual,
apart from chopping wood this morning. But apart from that,
I'm working at the moment in doing the promotional work
for the second edition of my book, Sid Shelton Rock
Against Racism, which is a book which we first published
in twenty fifteen by Autograph in Shoreditch. It was then

(03:27):
picked up by an American music producer who loved the
book and found one and said I'd love to publish
one publishes in America, and he got in touch with
a publisher called Rare Bird Books in Los Angeles and
they jumped at the opportunity. We had a couple of
zoom meetings and suddenly the show was on the road
for a worldwide distribution of the book, not just in

(03:50):
America but everywhere, which is being launched around now that
apparently it's official publication date in England the ninth of March,
but there are copies already getting into the shops and
into people's houses, and we're doing it tomorrow a book
signing at the Lucy Bell Gallery in Andard's. It's a

(04:10):
book which is about five years of my life which
were perhaps the most important and most certainly the most
exciting in some ways years of my life. And that
was from nineteen seventy six nineteen eighty one. I'd been
living for four years and working as a photojournalist and
graphic designer, but mostly as a photojournalist doing documentary photography

(04:34):
in Australia for four or five four and a half years,
i think. And I came back in late back to
London in nineteen eighty six, now seventy six, sorry, not
eight to six, nineteen seventy six, and things had changed
in those few years that I've been away. Things had
really deteriorated. The first major recession since the Second World
War was suddenly getting a grip on life in Britain,

(04:57):
and austerity which was still suffering from on was in
its infancy, the Callahan Labor government was imposing massive cuts
at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, who would
only finance the government providing they did install these cuts.
And it meant that scapegoating was rife and the growth

(05:19):
of an openly fascist party in the form of the
National Front was terrifying in many ways, and they were
putting marches through multicultural areas of Britain every weekend. Racist
murders were suddenly on the massive increase. And this was
at a time when we only had two TV channels
and the main one BBC one, and main Saturday night

(05:43):
show was the Black and White Minstrel Show, which everybody
watched because there was only two channels. You couldn't go
to Netflix or find another channel somewhere else in the
multitude of channels that we now all have. So it
races was becoming normalized. Love thy neighbor, love thy neighbor, yeah, exactly, yeah,

(06:06):
And it wrote racism was becoming absolutely normalized. It was
becoming quite legitimate for comedians to use black people, Irish people,
Roman people, gay people as the butt of dumb jokes.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
And it really was quite frightening.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Around this time, I thought a great guitarist, musician, Eric Clapton,
who we'd all been fans of, made the most incredible
outrageous racist rant at his concert in Birmingham. And Red Saunders,
who's another photographer and a lifelong friend of mine. He
and together with other people, wrote this fantastic letter after

(06:45):
this outbursts. Actually read about this outburst of Eric captains
calling for a rank and file movement called Rock Against Racism.
The response was just phenomenal. There were hundreds and hundreds
of people wrote to the original signatures of this letter saying, yeah,
we're look for it, we want to be part of
this is a great idea. We were really we like it,

(07:09):
and the show was immediately on the road. If you
see what I got involved shortly after that. I wasn't
a signature to the letter because I wasn't even in
the country, but I did get Oh, I've just been
handled a cup of coffee. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
We always care for snacks on this show. If anybody's
listening to this, since getting a cup of coffee and
we're having I'm having a cup of tea, but he's
had I've had to make my team. He's getting his
delivered into a studio. Waw, we're having a tea break now.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
I met Read in those early days and we be
care as I say, we became friends and have remained
friends to this day. He was an extraordinary dynamic man
with Edwalter, very successful photographer working for the Sunday Times,
and he had this I thought, for you know, a
working class lad from Pontifract. He had an insight into

(08:11):
the most glamorous world of photography because he shared a
studio with Garret Mankovitch did just about every record sleeve
that anybody could afford to have done, and also took
the famous pictures of Jimi Hendrix, one of which we've
got in our living room. And he and they had
this studio in an old boxing ring in Great Windows
Street in Soho and to me, this was just magic.

(08:33):
And we had our rock against racis and meetings in
that studio and sometimes there'll be sets of I always
remember the set for Kate Bush's I Think is Lionheart
that album, but we actually had the meeting in that set.
It was it was completely crazy, but it was it
was it was exciting as well. I mean, but we
really decided that we wanted to to do something, and

(08:55):
do something, but something which was creative, not just protest
marches and demonstrations. However, the big turning point in that story,
which all of which is recorded in the book in photographs,
it was in nineteen seventy seven in South London, in
Lewisham and New Cross, and the police raided twenty one

(09:19):
houses in May in Lewisham and New Cross and arrested
twenty one young people, the youngest of which was fourteen,
on suspicion of being muggers, which was that was the
bogie word then, was muggers. It was, and every young
black lad in particular, but sometimes girls as well were
potentially muggers and they were criminalized by the Metropolitan Police

(09:43):
and the Daily Mail of course on the Evening Standard.
This led to a fantastic campaign by people in Lewisham
and New Cross and for the defense of the Lewisham
twenty one as they became known the National Front. The
Fascist National Front organized a very very provocative march for

(10:04):
the thirteenth of August of that year to go through
Lewisham and New Cross and this was the trigger for
a massive counter demonstration, but it was also a trigger
for the police to have a goal because they really
wanted to crush that community, and they employed the quarter
of the entire Metropolitan Police and their entire cavalry division,

(10:27):
so every horse they had in London came to came
that day. They came to teach people a lesson. There
was no doubt about that. The National Front were allowed
to march and they forced their way through with the
police horses, but they were busted out of the area
very quickly. And the real battle of Luisiam on that
day was the battle between the local youth people from

(10:49):
all over the country as well, who came and actually
fought with the police for something like seven hours, and
the police responded by using riot shields for the first
time in mainland Britain. And it was I mean, there
was I think seven hundred people arrested, huge numbers of
people with injuries, and it was an extraordinary battle. But

(11:11):
in a way it was a victory too because the
local people of Lusiam and New Cross and the people
who came from all over the country weren't going to
sit down and take it. They really had had enough.
It was the day of Reckoning I think you could
best describe it. And the important thing as well for
it the movement of Rock Against Racism was that after

(11:31):
that the mixture of people from the Labor Party, the
Socialist Workers Party, trades unions, football managers came together to
form the Anti Nazi League, which was a group specifically
designed to counter the National Front and particularly at the
ballot box, remembering in some parts of London, for example

(11:53):
in Tower Hamlets, they'd been getting seventeen percent of the vote.
This is an openly fascist party whose slogan was if
they're right, they're all right. If their black, send them back.
This was a serious situation. People were getting killed out.
Our value was murdered in Brick Lane, and other Asian
murders took place all at the same time. In nineteen

(12:14):
seventy seven and seventy eight. We decided that as a
result of the formation of the Anti Arts League, this
was an organization which had much more clout than we
did in Rock Against Racism in the sense that they
had financial support because they had the trade union movement,
the Labor Party and so on, who could actually muster

(12:35):
serious resources. And we decided we wanted to put on
an event which we borrowed the title from the notting
Hill Carnival, which we called a carnival, but we didn't
want it to be a demonstration as such. We wanted
it to be an all day party which took over
the whole of London, and it turned out.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
To be that. I mean.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
People said that when we started building the stage in
Victoria Park, where in the borough of Tower Hamlets, where
the National Front had done so well, they said, you'd
be lucky if you get twenty thousand people would just
go straight to the park as well, that they won't
want to march seven and a half miles. It turned out.
I was in charge of Rock Against Races and Intrafagar

(13:18):
Square because I lived in Charing Cross Road, so it
was easy for me to walk down there and by
eight o'clock in the morning there was ten thousand people
already in the square and it swelled to about one
hundred thousand people and it.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Was a day long party.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
We had vans on trucks, stilt men, bands like the Ruts,
the Piranhas, the Mecons, Mistyan Roots, all on the back
of flatbed trucks. So people were dancing and partying throughout
all the streets of London and things like Virgin Records
gave us five hundred thousand whistles which we threw out

(13:54):
from the trucks. So the noise was absolutely deafening and
it was exciting a wonderful seven mile long party. When
in the build up to the carnival, the original bands
were Tom Robinson Band, X Ray Spex and Steel Pulse.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
A week I think maybe ten days or so before the.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Carnival, which was already building the momentum, Bernie Road strangers
up and said, look, my boys want to do it,
and come we have a chat. So they came round
to Red Studio and Read and Eye met with them
the whole of the clash and they were totally up
for it. But Bernie was it was on another planet,

(14:38):
I tell you. He was going, well, I'll let my
boys do it if you use the money you make
to buy a tank for Zimbabwe. We went buy a tank.
What are you talking about, Bernie. There's no money involved
in this. Nobody's getting paid. We're doing this because we're
believe in it, not because we're making any money. And

(14:59):
they just, i mean, the clash just overrolled him and said, look,
we're doing it. And that was a game changer because
the Clash were the hottest band in the country at
that time, and once word got out, there weren't on
any of the posters or the fires or advance of
publicity that we'd put out at all, but the word
went out. I don't know how it went out. Everybody
knew the Clash were going to play, and they really

(15:20):
weren't the hottest band in town and it was an
extraordinary date. The day after that day, the Greater London
Council elections were held and the National Front went down
from seventeen percent to what point five percent, which was
I don't know how much we can credit that to
the Rock Against Racism carnival, but I think we can

(15:41):
credit the fact that there was a significant and very
vocal opposition to them and people were being starting to
be being made aware that they were actually Nazis.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Talk about that God does adventure. Big part of your
life was all capitulated in the book Rock Against Racism,
but you can see it broken down quite a bit
in your Coffee World books. Yes, well, you've got the
Street Port Wait, the Battle of Lewisham, Street Port Wait
two and Rock Against Racism. So I presume crowds as well.
That's a lot of that is broken down elements of

(16:15):
Rock Against Racism. Your journey through that period, isn't that? Yeah,
absolutely it is.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
And a lot of the Cafe Royal books are in
the in the Rock against Racism, yeah yeah, it's just
put together as a more coherent narrative, whereas the Cafe
Royal book I much more about individual photographs in a
way I'm doing it. There's another one coming out another
Street Portrait three is coming out.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Right and around east. It's all over the place actually.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Some are in Los Angeles, summer, in Australia, some are
in Ireland. Some are in West Belfast, which is another
book which which I had. There's two books and there's
a Cafe Royal book on West Belfast. But there's also
a book which is done by Fist full of books
and Fist books called The Falls.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Well, I want to get onto that. I want to
get onto that. Actually I'll tell you about the falls.
I'll tell you a story about the falls, and then
I'm going to ask you how it all began, and
then we can work our way down to the falls.
Because I'm intrigued with your Sydney Shoots and your your
your Belfast stuff. But I had a copy of The
Fist Full of Books Falls last year. It's a flat laybook.

(17:30):
It's absolutely beautiful and I haven't got a copy of
it now. I had a copy and I was with
Simon who published it, and I had it in my hand.
Lovely guy, yeah he is. And I was in Manchester,
but I was also with Colin Wilkinson, who right, who
was who publishes Who's the Head Hanshaw at a Blue

(17:52):
Core Press. So I was with Colin and Colin had
a couple of boxes have used books. I and I.
On one hand, I had Simon saying, oh, I'll get
the Falls Sid's book. But Colin was going to me.
They had this box of books. He was going do
you want this? Do you want that? Do you want that?
Do you want that? Because you like me, Dad Colin

(18:13):
And in that box he was sort of saying there
was like killips and there was all sorts of stuff.
And I kept saying, oh, yeah, I'll have that, I'll
have that. But I'm in Manchester and I live on
the South coast of England. So eventually I had like
this pile of books. I couldn't carry. And then I
said to Simon I would keep Sid's book for now.
They said, because I can't take anymore. Colin's gonna kill me.
He's given me so many books, so that's the only

(18:35):
reason I haven't got a copy. But I thought that
was beautiful. Simon's done a really good job on that book.
And you can buy that book fist Bull of Books
website and I'll put a link with that because twenty
quid because you signed editions have all been sold down. Yeah,
for twenty quid, it's world worth. But it's so really good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
I was well pleased and it was a real pleasure
working with a good man.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's a good but I've worked with them. I had
a book, a couple of projects published with them. Tell
me where it all Begune. You were born in Pontifactor,
Yeah I was.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
I was born a working class household in Pontefractory.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
I suppose really.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
I always felt cheated that I went to a secondary
modern school because I was never I failed my eleventh
plus partly because I'm a bit dyslectic lexic. I can't
even spit say the word, and I couldn't spell at all.
But I still can't. In those days, we were all
streamed and people who were good with their hands, which
I was destined to go to either Pollard Bearings, which

(19:35):
was an engineering factory, or go down the pit the mines,
and I was determined. My dad wasn't a mind and
my dad was originally a cabinet maker but ended up
being a postman, and he they were determined. I wasn't
weren't going to go down the mines. But my dream
was always to go to art school, and everybody, I

(19:57):
mean really that was quite a radical thing do. And
art schools were very different in those days. You went
there when you were sixteen years old, and I did.
I went when I was sixteen. It really changed my life,
it was it was my dream was to go to
art school and it really I loved the fact that
I could do painting and sculpture and for five and

(20:19):
I stayed there for five years.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
It was just sixteen fifteen, fourteen thirteen up north because
I was brought up not far from you. Where did
the love of art come from?

Speaker 2 (20:31):
But as a child, I always loved drawing and making things.
That was my obsession, making models, model airplanes, model villagers
and drawing and drawing was really what I mean, if
I could get a brand new drawing book.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
I mean, we didn't have.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Like I'm sure you're you know those days in nineteen fifties,
there was not much money around at all, and so
you know, I'd draw on all sorts of scraps, of
paper backs, of envelopes or whatever I could get was
a white sheet of paper. I don't know I had.
I had a twin he suddenly died eight years ago now,
but I had a twin brother, and he he had

(21:10):
no really they he didn't have any interest in drawing
out and painting at all. But it was my obsession
and it was my He also was very let me
put it this way. He had a lot of ill
health when he was when he was a kid, and
he spent quite a bit of time in hospital. I
used to spend a lot of time on my own

(21:31):
because my parents were looking after him and seeing to
him and going to see him in hospital and so
and I'd often My grandmother lived next door but one
so I was always safe in the house. But I
did spend and that's when I really started getting into
drawing and art. It was what made my heart beat
still does. Really, I mean, I'm still that's exactly where

(21:55):
when my passion lies. When I left art school, the
first thing I did was, and this is crazy in
a way, this came to London.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
I went to London.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I'm no longer in London, but I went to London
with I think forty quid i'd saved up in my pocket,
and I stayed for a while with my mother's sister
and Anty, who gave me accommodation, and I'd got bits
of work. I worked in a hotel for a while,
cleaning in the kitchen and so on, just really crap jobs.

(22:25):
But then I walked into Saint Martin's in Charing Cross Road,
which he could do in those days without going through
any security, and I went to see I don't know
how I got the gal to do it, see Freddy Gore,
who was head of painting, and I told him my
story of how I, where I'd come from, and what
I'd done, And I said, is there any teaching work
and working? He said no, but he said we are

(22:49):
looking for a technician, and he gave me the job
of technician in the painting department, which I stayed and
did for three years.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
So you're about twenty three here, were you? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
I was about twenty one when I went there, say
twenty one or two, and I stayed till I was
about twenty five.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Say yeah, yeah. So he went from Wakefield to London
to Saint Martin's.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
And I ended up finding a place to live, which
was quite an eccentric man who was actually professor of
psychology at the Open University. And he put an advert
in The Times of all places, which my Auntie spotted,
and it said I remember it really and said single room,
vacant November twelfth. His nibs, who lives on premises being

(23:33):
short on good nature himself, welcomes the sunnyside in others.
And I thought this is actually quite intriguing, and I
I phoney bought and went round and it was great.
I lived there for all of those three years and
then deciding I wanted to do something else, and it

(23:53):
was Being a technician at Saint Martin's was fantastic and
I was not much older than students, so I got
my friends tended to be all the students and we
got on really well, and so HO was a fantastic
place in those days. It was really you know, in
charing Cross Road and particilarly Valerie was our local where
we go and have coffee. But no where there was

(24:15):
only that one, particularly Valery in a conference.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
And were you taking pictures at all? No, I wasn't
taking pictures.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
I was doing paintings, which were hard edged paintings, if
it's a little bit like Frank Stellar, if you like,
very graphic, very abstract. And it started to worry me
because I was becoming more political, more involved in daily life,
and yet my art was somehow of it a bit

(24:46):
removed more Ivory Tower. And I remember meeting who used
to come and have a cup of tea. Joseph Kodulca
used to come into Saint Martin's and we'd always sit
and have a cup of tea, and he he showed
me a lot of his work and I was very
much in influenced by his work at that time. I
thought it was absolutely wonderful and he was a lovely man.
And I haven't seen him for fifty years probably And

(25:07):
where however long ago that was, I decided I wanted
to travel and wanted to do something different, and I
went off to Southeast Asia and ended up in Sydney
in Australia, where I knew some people and found somewhere
to live.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Quite quickly. I thought you might have been the ten
pound pom.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
No, no, no no, I didn't go till then, but
you could. There was no immigration problems. Then you could
work and you could you could go there. And that's
when I bought my first camera, which i'll show you
I've still got it.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
So he's off to find his camera. Boy, he doesn't
realize that you can't see it.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
It's this is my first camera.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Can you explain it? And there's nobody can see that, nick,
isn't it? What's up? Lens? Fitting?

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, it's with a fifteen mil one point four lens,
and it was it was really in some ways a
Pullman's Nikon then was like the that's right, absolutely built
like a tank and the most professional camera. The Nicko
Matt had the same lenses and the quality of the
images was just as good. In fact, it's identical. But

(26:12):
it was a cheaper version. And I said that I've
never afforded a nick on it at that time. But
it was a very it's I mean, actually it's still
what's amazing, it still works, it's fifty odd years old
and it's still it looks a good now, yeah, it's
it's scratched and battered a bit, and it's certainly covered
in dust at the moment. I haven't just did it
for a while, but I have most of the cameras

(26:33):
I've ever owned. Still there's too many memories in them
that I just wouldn't ever and they're not worth anything
anyway really, so I'd never get rid of them.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
But it was that fifty mil lens I saw.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, it's a fifty mili one point eight, actually it
is that one. What's on there. I don't think that's
the original lens. I think that's a more modern lens.
I will have the original lens. It's not on there
for some reason. I think it's on one of my
other nick ons. Well, how was quite extraordinary because we're
talking about the story of Australian pictures and one of

(27:05):
the first stories that I did was I went to Redfern,
which I've just put something up on Instagram about those
pictures from Redfern, which was an area where urban Aboriginal
people lived and the New South Wales Builders Labor's Federation,
which I had done photographs of quite a bit. We're

(27:26):
getting involved in trying to force the labor governments with
them governments into transforming a whole block of houses, of
terrace houses into a housing cooperative for urban Aboriginal people,
and they were successful. But I went down there. I
think I was the only photographer whoever went down there

(27:46):
and photographed these people and who lived there.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
I didn't do thousands of pictures.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I did a few, and mostly quite I realized that
I wasn't really a classic documentary photographer. I like I
was somewhere between a documentary photographer and a studio photographer,
and I like to set portraits up.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Well, that's interesting to say that, because I look at
that work and you shot a lot of verticals at
the time. Yeah, I did. I could see that in
the port that studio style in there with them verticals.
But that's not a bad thing. It's just like I
noticed there was a lot of verticals on there. Do
you think them Sydney shots was the beginning of your
quest to sort of find answers to things which were

(28:28):
sort of absolutely suffering with it early on at the
It's St. Martin's, Yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
That's where I, as Carol Tuller said in I think
in the introduction to the to the Rock Against Racism book,
that's where I owned my activist eye. If it's you
know what I mean, And I think that's absolutely right.
The great story about that was that I really those photographs.
I printed up about a dozen of them. I thought,

(28:54):
what am I going to do with these? And if
I am a friend of mine who was an academic,
really but you're also did some journalism wrote a story
about it called Black Redford, and we sent it off
to this magazine, which was a weekly magazine in a
three format called Nation Review, which was a bit like
the Sunday Times Color Supplement was at that time. It

(29:16):
was a very liberal but widely read because of it,
and very visual. I said they won't be I don't
know whether they'll pick them up or not. But they
send a telegram the next day and said, great story,
great pictures using this week and they did four double
page spreads and the cover. And that was my first

(29:36):
published work and it made such a huge difference. Has
sudden suddenly people how much capped? Oh, probably about seventy quid.
It was not a lot what in seventy seventy three four.
That was quite a bit of money there, it was.
It wasn't it really. I couldn't believe that I could
then start to make a living as taking photographs, which

(29:59):
I did, But that was perhaps my fondest memory because
it was really working cast imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
You just don't see, is it? Oh? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (30:08):
But for show them, they'll just say, I know, these
are rubbish.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I think a lot of photographers suffer about that.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
I still have that fear when I publish things that
people are going to like.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
But I think we also have a sort of an
aubredity with the subject matter as well. Yeah. Well that's
the important thing for me.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I don't want to criticize other photographers, but I really
don't like that sort of photography which takes the piece
of working class people.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Where I work is very much about empathy with the
subjects and the people I photograph, and I really I'm
very conscious of of that. It's really important to me.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
So you're working with the likes of Nation Review and
you were becoming a working photographer, what film camera did
you use them? Were you changing your cameras or are
you still working with your Nico mat Mostly.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
I used the Nico mat and I also had another
nick I can't remember it was it would it be
a FN.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Or I can't remember. I haven't got that one.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
But somewhere between the Nicko map and my F three's,
which were the cameras that I used for years and
years and years and still how there were other Nickons,
and I can't be the way I know. I had
an F E at one point two, but there was
a mechanical one, not an electronic one, which I also had.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
With a silver edge, silver casing on it. Yeah, maybe
that was what it was.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, I think it's yeah, that's it, a silver yeah, yeah.
And I always carried two cameras because some so you
didn't have to change lenses so often. In fact, now
I often looked back, I've still got all, as I say,
all those cameras. How I used to walk around with
sort of two Nickons, five lenses of flash unit and
loads of film. That's surprising. I'm not totally lobsided or

(31:50):
not just me. I had any photographers who carried around
role that year because it was so heavy.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
I can't believe it. You did a few guys in
Sydney and Australia. What brought you back to the K.
I missed things like the music scene in England. I
missed football.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
When you've been brought up in one particular culture, you
miss the references to things like television programs. You miss
all those things which have become part of you over
the twenty five or twenty three or whatever. It was
years that in your formative period. And after a while
I became tired of Australia's philistinism sometimes. I mean, it's

(32:27):
changed immensely now, I know, but at that time there
was you know, photography and art were not really taken
very seriously. But I did put together an exhibition at
the Sydney Filmmakers called called Working Class Heroes, which was
really well, we see. But it was time to come back.
That's that's all I can say. It was the right
time to come back.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
So you said you missed football. Yeah, who's your team?
Manchester United? Oh yeah, you come from Leeds and you
support just As That's so obvious, isn't.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
It, Boughts, Well, I don't come from Leeds that upontly
for but nearly it's no. I never likedly hang about
with my.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Just you liked very good in the seventies. No, not
that good. No, you live down in the South coast.
I saw that Classic Territories from Manchester.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
You like the supporters absolutely. I don't go very often nowadays,
I must say.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Back in London, graphic design was becoming a big part
of your life again, wasn't that your art was coming in? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, and I always I think one of the things
that really got me is that I really got annoyed
about the way in which my photographs were used on
the page sometimes and I wanted to control that a
little bit more, and that's what got me back into graphics.
But I also always have had a love of typography,
and so the two combined and I really loved working

(33:45):
where I would do everything, you know, we would do
the graphics and the photography. And a good example of
that was we did I did with Red Saunders in
the eighties and nineteen eighty four and eighty five a
series of photographic books called A Day in the Life
of Books.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
You did Northern Ireland and you did London, didn't you
with them? Yeah? And we did Los Angeles. That was
an accumulation of different photographers and you and your own
work as well. Wasn't that.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, Yeah, we brought one hundred like for the London
but we brought one hundred photographers from all over the world.
But also we left twenty places for people who nobody
had ever heard of, and that would include its students
or whatever people who came along. We looked at hundreds
and hundreds of portfolios and we made eventually the selection
of the one hundred photographers. I mean there were from

(34:31):
living legends like Andre Cortez, Don McCullen, William Klein to
Sally Solmes, to people, as I say, nobody had ever
heard of. And we sent them out to different locations,
presigned decided locations, like for example, we sent Old Winston
Link to photograph Concord and to different places. We mixed

(34:51):
it up. We put advertising photographers in the sewers, We
put documentary photographers in advertising what would normally be advertising
type situations. But I also was one of the photographers
and that was quite an incredibly nerve wracking thing to
think you're going out for twenty four hours, You've got
photographed for twenty four hours, and nobody's we're going to

(35:12):
blind edit this book. And Bruce Bernard, who was picture
editor at Sunday Times was going to edit it. You're
going to have to really sharpen your brain to get
some pictures to get anything in the book. And fortunately
it was a good day for me. Some people didn't
have a good day. I remember, I forgot his name.
French photographer who died recently sent me a postcard said,
I'm not giving you the film. I didn't have a

(35:33):
good day. No, Harry Grier, how you grew up?

Speaker 1 (35:38):
He was your influences photographically here who was really inspiring.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
William Klein was certainly one of my influences. And Don McCullin,
of course, Paul Strand, all the classics really like most
of us, I suppose. But I also learned a lot
from people around me, people who were friends, people like
Peter Lavery, Red Saunders, and it taught me about using
flash and mixing light, a lot of influences which you

(36:07):
tend to overlook from your actual peers, which was really
for me too.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Hang about Harry, guy had still alive? Do you mean
Klin died recently? Did the client died recently? Sorry? Harry? Yeah, yeah, sorry, Harry.
That was brilliant. Harry Gray, here is a beautiful I mean,
his work is amazing. I think Klient died recently, didn't they. Yeah, Yeah,

(36:32):
Harry is still very much in kicking his way in
his eighties. Now wow, well that's fantastic. This seventies to
the early eighties was a massive change for you, wasn't it.
This was when your whole racism journey took on. It
sort of what you just were talking about, this is
when it all sort of started kicking in. It is
this period. We've covered some of the stuff you did
with the Lewis and Wygat and the stuff with the Protest,

(36:55):
because that was a big feature of a lot of
your work throughout the Guest. But what thing you did
which I was really jealous of as you went on
the Militant to us. Yes, you were shooting the Clash
and Sham sixty nine. All of these bands, Man, what
was that like? What was it like hanging out with
the Clash and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
It was brilliant. It was absolutely fantastic. All the bands
that we never ever remember having an argument with any
of them. They all got there and they all got
stuck in. You know, when we when we'd be onloading
the PA, they'd be Malcolm Owen would be on one
end of the box and I'd be on the other.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
There was a great camaraderie between the bands and the
and the organizers and and it was. It was fantastic.
We did a gig at which I did a lot
of pictures on that max. It was very visual evening
West Runton Pavilion in nineteen seventy nine and the bands
were the Gang of Four, the Ruts and the Mistian Roots.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
We arrived there.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
It's a long drive from London. I remember I drove
an old Comby van full of PA gear and copies
of temporary hoarding the magazine that we used to put together.
We got there and they were it was this massive
great shed toast to the beach, the Westronton Pavilion. It's
long gone now.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
When we got the there was nobody there at all.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
All the other gigs that we'd done up to there,
with two previous ones Cambridge and Leicester, there were huge
cues when we arrived outside the outside the venue, but
there was nobody at this one. And when nobody said anything.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
We put the PA in.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
The bands did their sound checks and there's still nobody there.
But nobody dares say this is the party when no
one came, you know that the one that you dreaded.
But then suddenly all these double decker buses came round
the headland, when the whole all of the punters came
from all the villages all around and from Norwich and

(38:41):
bought a fleet of double decker buses and the drivers
of double decker busses just sat outside and waited for
the whole gig for three hours or however long it took,
and then they all got back in the buses and
off they went back to wherever they came from. It
was just incredible. That was a great gig. The Guardian
do this thing from now time to time on a Thursday.

(39:02):
I think my best shot and I used one of
the shot my shots when they did my best shot
from that gig of this girl in fishnet tights laying
on the stage.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Which I got up there. I saw it. I saw
a laying there. You're driven by.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Total adrenaline in those situations. And I had two nickons
and I think it was a Norman flash I had
in those days, and I climbed over everybody's head to
get the shots. I knew there was only going to
be a second to get it and be gone. And
I did get the shot, and then was thrown by
the bouncers over the top of everybody and landed on
one of my nick ons, because which is the penterprisms

(39:39):
still got a dint from that that day. But it
was one of those shots. Like a lot of shots
and news of photographer must remember, especially when we're talking
about the days of film, You're never sure whether you've
got it right, had you got in focus, had you
got the exposure right, did the flash burn out?

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Or was it all right?

Speaker 2 (39:58):
All those worries. And I remember drove through the night
on the way back with the PA and it was
a convoy of vans with Misty the Roots. The gang
of four had gone off to Leeds they went the
other way, but we went on this long, all night
convoy and I went straight to the dark room and
processed the film, and I remember very well smoking. There's

(40:19):
to smoke in those days. I'n't done for a bloody
long time now, but smoking as I'm washing the film,
just thinking can I have a look? Can I have
a look? Did I get it? It was there, but
that anxiety used to be.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
It was I'm sure you remember it of.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Some film and waiting to see if you'd actually yeah,
got the image.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
You thought you had covered the clash on the Hyde
Park gig, didn't you? No, not a Hyde Park? And no?
Was that not Hyde Park? Victoria Park? The rock against
that Trictoria Park. Yeah? Is that the clush for you
all where they're playing live which is on YouTube. Yes,
it's all over YouTube. It's a Trictorial part. I thought
it was Hyde Park Victoria. My bad. That was the

(41:01):
first carnival. Yeah at Victoria Pass you on the stage?
Weren't you get because you got that? Is it George Summer?
Who the famous one?

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I have got one of John, But the famous one
is the one of Paul stimming in the back of him.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Paul someone in Yeah, are you on the video? No?

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Because what happened was there was a little bit of
aggravation over over that thing. Is that the people who
are making that film, rude boy, They sort of thought
that they owned the stage and they cleared They had
some quite heavy guys who are cleared us all off
the stage so they could get their film done. So
when they were filming that, I was back out the
front doing pictures. But I got about looking at the

(41:40):
contact sheet, which is actually in the book, interested in
the contact sheet from I didn't. I have probably got
four or five shots before I was on the stage. Wow,
but that was a lucky one. That and you got
that shot while ironically, and when you look at that
contact sheet, I actually didn't ring that image at all.
I over looked at completely.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
How many times have we done that with contact sheets? Yeah,
it always takes somebody else to look at it. Go,
you've missed one, look at that. That's exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Quite a few years later, someone said, look, look this
is a fantastic shot and it's much better than the
ones you printed, and they were.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Of course it was true. So going back to Belfast,
which you did around nineteen seventy nine, this was in
amongst your your racism journey or anti racism journey. You've
got the flat lay book with fist full of books
and there's a coffee World books on the falls. Yeah.
You know when you were in Sydney and you were
you were searching for answers in a way, is that

(42:38):
what you were doing going to Belfast? Exactly?

Speaker 2 (42:41):
It was a voyage of discovery, very much so. And
it was a voyage which I wanted to at that time.
It's seventy seven and seven. I went twice, actually seventy
seven and seventy nine, and I have no idea which
pictures are from seventy seven and which is seventy nine,
badly so they're just blurring one. But I did go twice,
and I went on that long journey up to its Scotland,
from Stranra to lan Ferry and then the train to Belfast.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I had no money at that time.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
All my money went on film, and I think I
took probably twenty rolls of film in total on both journeys.
But I wanted to go along and photograph in Republican
areas because that was where the venom of the anti
Irish racism was really directed. They were being vilified people,

(43:27):
Republican people and people of West Belfast were being demonized
in this country as been absolutely evil. I mean in
the same way jihad is treated nowadays. That everybody was
a member of the IRA and everyone was a gunman.
But I wanted to try and find out for myself
what people were like, but also to put a human

(43:50):
face to that inquiry.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Did you have any contacts over there.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
I did have contacts a guy called Jerry Fitzpatrick who
was part of the Troops Out movement. He gave me
a series of contacts and people who allowed me to
sleep on their floors because I was there for about
five to six days and I didn't have money for
hotels or anythings, so I slept on people's floors. But
they were all contacts which I wasn't allowed to write down.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
I had to.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Memorize their addresses and things, because obviously the security situation
was pretty serious.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
To say the least, quite a ballsy move going over there,
because it was quite a scary place when you're looking
from the outside in, it was scary.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
But what was remarkable, and really I'm not exaggerated, is
just how incredibly hospitable and kind the people I met were.
They were all the fact that I was a bridge
was absolutely not a non starter. And one of the
things I always remember so well was I always walked
in those days. Of course, Chrich in the height of
Rock Against Racism, Rock Against Racism badge, and I had

(44:55):
quite a few in my pocket. I gave a lot away,
and most of the people young people but I met.
We're more interested in talking about bands in England than
they were about talk or stiff Little Fingers for that matter,
than they were talking about the troubles.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, because you were the man who's photographing the punk
scene at the time, you had a lot of credibility
out there.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, and it did give you credibility. I just walked
the streets. I didn't know what to expect when I
go around the corner. I did see something. I didn't
want to photograph the troubles because I felt like everybody else,
you know, Chrystine Perkins, Dive Lumpkin, Don McCullen were all
doing fantastic job a photographing the troubles. But I wanted
to photograph the people, not the troubles.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Your work has been predominantly black and white, even in Islands,
and there's other stuff you've done. Colours seeped through somewhere.
And what I've noticed about your column is you use
a bit of flash as well with your color. Yeah,
you could sort of see that in some of your
black and white as well. Talk about your journey with
color and how it relates to graphic design work, because again,

(45:57):
a lot of your static color work it's very design based.
It's very the design elements are very much featuring within that,
I think, so.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
I mean, one of the things that I'm always a
bit obsessive about is that when you place somebody in
the background, that you really worry about the background as
much as you worry about the person as well. You
are doing a composition, and I do get obsessed about that.
But I did start to use flash mostly when I
started doing color work, because we enabled you to control

(46:26):
the color a little bit more. But also I love
doing that mixture where you can use the ambient light
and flash together, and I still work with doing that.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
I still have like to use flash as well because.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
It can freeze things, but it's that mixture of the
ambiance and or really do I use flash just as flash?
I use it always as a mix.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
What you're popping at about is stop undoing.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, and often with quite slow shutter speed, so things
will move a little bit and you get a bit
of smudginess.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
I used to shoot a lot like that, more for
commercial work and stuff. I'd always yeah, an editorial work
for newspapers, I'd always shoot on a slow shut of
speed saved five point six and then I would or
six point seven or seven whatever, and then I would
have always had my flashing about F four five point
six just to stop us all under yeah, and it
would capture it perfectly. I was intrigued by your color

(47:21):
work because on the surface you're black and white man. Yeah,
underneath that you're very much color graphic design, design based
photographer and artists as well, aren't you. Yeah, I am.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
But sometimes it's sort of hidden away there underneath it
all it is. I've always said in my sort of career,
I suppose that some people know me as a graphic
designer and some people know me only as a photographer,
and not many people know me as both, which is
quite interesting. But I've always said that the aesthetic decisions
that you make in making pictures photographs is exactly the

(47:55):
same as laying out a page in a leaflet or
a book or it a poster or whatever, and you're
making the same sort of visual decisions. And it's going
back to really art school. And one of the dominant
things in art schools when I went to art school
was the Bowerhouse method of teaching, which was very abstract,

(48:17):
but it was very much about sort of arranging two
oranges on a black square and working out how that
could best be the most dynamic composition. I really think
those sort of aesthetic decisions are really the same whether
you're making a photograph or you're making a page. Part
of the reason I liked one of the things I

(48:39):
like about the sort of shallow theatrical space as I
call it, which I often use in photographs where you
don't necessarily I mean it's not always true, but often
don't have much of a backgrounds. It's quite the background
is almost like a studio backdrop is I used to
like that certainty of certain places where i'd take people
to photograph, and one was hair Row in Cambridge Heath

(49:02):
in East London. And because it was underneath the railway
viaducts or whatever you call it, were going to Cambridge
He's station, and you could control the light very very assuredly.
You could make it because you could move somebody to
the left you get more light coming in from that side,
or you move them to the right you get more
light coming in from there, but no overhead light. And

(49:22):
it was really I love that sort of certainty, which
meant you could concentrate on getting the relationship between the photographer,
the camera and the person you're photographing to really work.
As I've said many times before, sometimes that takes a
long time. And sometimes the first shot, I'm sure you
know that you're in your own practice, you know, it's
exactly the same. Sometimes you go along and the first

(49:44):
shot you take is absolutely perfect because a person gives
you everything because they've not God, they've not built up
that guard, they've not started posing, they're not started, not
started being self conscious about the camera. And then other
times you have to work at it and take it
an hour or two hour to actually get the person
to do.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
It's also your mental state as well. How do you
walk into that? Yeah, it is partly that too. Yeah,
I agree. The fundamentals are so important, and I think, Yeah,
I talk to students about that. That's the first thing
I'll teach them. I never expect them to want to
be photographers or filmmakers or artists. They can make a
decision when they know the basic ingredients that make up

(50:23):
art film, photography, and that's what's important. And I see
that in your work.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
It is and that's why I have no problem switching
from one to the other. You know, if I'm doing
a little flyer for tomorrow's book signing. I know how
to work with type as well and how it relates
to the photograph and so on, and I do enjoy
working in both areas still very much. If at the book,
the book I've designed cover, they publishers changed the cover slightly,

(50:48):
but which I was a bit disappointed with. But the
rest of it is completely all designed by me and
put together in on my computer in Cork Express, which
I still use for most design were.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Did you find you had more artistic license with graphic
design or would you photography? Was it just the same?

Speaker 2 (51:06):
No, it was the same. It was very much the same.
I found it easier to earn money doing graphic design
than I did doing photography, and I think that that
was essential, especially for quite a period I was a
single parent, and I actually fitted in well with doing
that because I could leave the studio at three o'clock
to go and get my daughter from school or whatever. Yeah,

(51:27):
there was all sorts of other you know, those sort
of considerations as well, which determine what you do and
what you don't do. I mean, and also you get
older as well. I mean I would I don't think
I would walk around the streets of West Belfast in
quite the same way as I did when I was younger.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Have you ever venture did to digital? Then, yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
I now use digital cameras and I love them. I
really like them.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
What you're playing with now?

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Then, I've got a couple of jujifilm Expro twos that.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Seems to be the camera of the moment at a minute.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
I've had them for a couple of years and I
really like them. The Expro one was really slow for focus,
so it was I used to usually a manual focus
because the focus was just too ridiculously slow. But the
two is a really good cameras, very good. I mean,
the quality is astounding, really compared.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
With the film see it is. Do you find when
you're scanning your legs you realize the difference in quality?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I do, But unfortunately I bought it quite a fit,
probably ten years ago now immer con scanner, and it's
so good. You can actually see that the grain is
really sharp.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
There's a uniqueness about old legs. But there's definitely a
softness which you don't get in the digital, isn't there? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:35):
There is, yeah, And there's a there's a lot more
mistakes as well, which sometimes really really can help.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
So what's next project? Right? You working on anything at all?
Apart from your exhibitions and books, There's something new coming
on the horizon for you. I've been doing pictures and
will continue to. In fact, I'm just saying I've got
to go up and do something in the East End,
which I continue to do walking the streets to the
East End. And I'm still young enough to be able
to young enough, but it's fit enough, I should say,

(53:06):
to be able to spend the whole day walking and
looking for pictures.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Do you find it easier now or is as harder now?
Photographing much harder, much harder. There's no comparison.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Why Why is that?

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Partly because of the number of times people are photographed,
people who have got really bored with it, and really,
you know, I mean because everybody's photographed to everything.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
You know, if you go to a GigE, there'll be
a thousand photographs every time whoever's singing moves towards the microphone.
Everybody's a photographer. Everybody's got cameras, but they're not photographers.
I call that visual evidence. That's the collectors of visual evidence.
Which is not photography. That's only one aspect of photography,
but it makes people much more wary of being photographed.

(53:49):
And I think also the other thing what makes people
weary have been photographed is things like superstars, like David
Beckham's obsession with image rights. They realize that there's in
imagery and they feel ripped off quite often if they're
not being paid for be photographed, which I've never paid
anybody to ever photograph. I've never ever paid anybody interesting it.

(54:11):
I went I think five years ago now or no,
I'm a bit longer, twenty sixteen. I think as we
went to Jamaica, I spent a few days in a
couple of villagers just walking around talking to people and
making portraits of people. That was like the old times.
People were much more willing to be photographed and much
more responsive when you started photographing them, and there was

(54:32):
a much more vibrant conversation, if you know what I mean,
between the photographer and the personnel photographing. Just like in
the nineteen seventies it was. Now it's very very difficult
to make I mean often to when the day walk
in the street and don't take a single image that's
partly because as you get older, you know you don't
bother wasting time when you know not something's not working.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
And the Jamaicans you could see on your website as
a girl with Jamaicans on, Yeah, there is. What advice
would you give yourself your young assaults now when you
look back and reflect, did you change anything? Or yeah?

Speaker 2 (55:04):
I would, I'd spend more time taking photographs and less
time doing graphics.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
I think.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
I think photography is at the end of the day,
it is the thing which really does make my heartbeat
the most exciting.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Wit.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, I would have done that, and I think that
was a career mistake. If you like, we can't do
anything about it.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
But I'm sure the Graphic Designs has paid the rent
as well. Yeah, exactly, exactly, so that's what's important. Yeah, Sid,
it's been wonderful. I must say, you're the first photographer
who I've spoken to on these podcasts who is stuck
to his northern roots, even though he's ventured off to Ireland, Sydney,

(55:41):
hung out with the clash and everything. Has done this
interview with a flat cap on. Oh yeah, you could
take the yorctionmen out of a man, but you can't
take the orcan out well what am I talking about?
I can't even get the saying right. But yeah, when
I saw you, initially I thought Yorkshire boy. You're talking
to me with a flat cap on, and you know what,

(56:04):
it just reminds me of being back up north, because
it's interesting going back. My granddad always had a flat
cap on and I never thought anything of it. That
and then looking back on life when we all associate
Northerners were flat caps on and you're sitting there and
you remind me of home, even though you're in Manchester
United supporter, so you leads I'm from the northeast of

(56:28):
a red and white ah Sunderland. Yeah, that's at least
you know where Sundon is. Most people don't even know
where it is. Oh I know.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Yeah, I never been to Sunderland. In more than one occasion.
Carol and my wife did an exhibition called Black British
Style at the VNA and that went to Sunderland, and
I remember we went up there and it was it's great. Actually,
you don't have to say that because you're talking to
me though. No, Actually, we're just trying to work out
how to go up to Newcastle because I don't really
saw that wonderful installation by Hugh Locke at the Tate

(56:59):
called the Procession. It's going to the Baltic and I
would love to see it there, to see what it
looks like in the Baltic. The Baltic's fantastically. The Harbor,
the key area down in Newcastle on the quay side.
It it's beautiful. It's just much needed there, you know,
the rock against it and part of it went to
the Side Gallery up there and we went up for
that too.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
That was great. Yeah, the side my my childhood, my youth,
the Side Gallery. Yeah, it's brilliant. They've got a great collection.
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's been wonderful and thank you. I've
been wanting to talk to you for ages about you
and your life and your connections to the world to
get photography and it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Brilliant.

(57:40):
Take care, Take all the best. Take care,

All Episodes

#20 Syd Shelton - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Fudd Around And Find Out

Crime Junkie

The Breakfast Club

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#20 Syd Shelton - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST