Amelia’s Magazine | Through the Lens: An Interview with Dean Chalkley

Courtesy of The Book Club

Dean Chalkley has shot everyone. Not with a gun, obviously, although that would be quite an interesting story in itself. As one of the most respected photographers in Britain, Dean Chalkley has snapped a platter of well known faces from Scarlett Johansson to Simon Cowell.
In his new exhibition, The New Faces, which is currently exhibiting at The Book Club, Dean Chalkley returns the exploring mod culture. Having been at the forefront of the Mod explosion in 2006, when The Horrors burst onto the scene from Southend, I sit down with Dean Chalkley to discuss life, death and what makes a good photographer…

I know you started out with Dazed and Confused, but prior to that, how did you get involved with photography?
It depends how far you want to go back really! When I was a kid my dad had a big old Russian Zenith, which was a bit like a tank. Really solid. I don’t think he knew how to use it properly, and I certainly didn’t. But we played around with, experimenting with all kinds of filters; so I got into it from that context. As I got older I got much more into it. At school I was really into clothes and wanted to be a fashion designer, so photography took a backseat as I thought I was going to be the next Savile Row tailor to the stars! Then I got in car racing funnily enough. Only minis, but I raced at Brands Hatch and places like that. But before I did the racing, I went to Brands Hatch and ended up taking pictures of the cars. After that I decided I wanted to find out more about photography, so I did some evening classes at a local college, which was a bit of an odd experience. They’d get a model in, and you’d have to queue up to take a photo of her, a bit odd really. Then I decided to give up on motor racing and get into photography full time.

It’s interesting that you wanted to be a fashion designer when you were younger as a lot of your photographs, like the ones currently on display at The Book Club have a very strong fashion aesthetic.
When I was in school, I was a real strict mod character. Probably quite annoying, but I didn’t care! I grew up in Southend on Sea, and at that time there was a real strong hold on youth culture, it was very tribal. I was a mod and I loved the music, the clothes, the scooters, I was immersed in it. Conversely you got characters such as the skinheads, who were doing the same thing but they hated you. These were the times where if you wore a pink shirt and walked down South End High Street, you’d definitely get your head kicked in. No question of a doubt. Today it’s a lot more liberal. Back then it was very divided. You had a passion and a pride for your tribe.

All images Courtesy of PYMCA and copywrited by the artist

You returned to the Southend Scene later when you did a lot of photographs for Junk Club and The Horrors, who embraced that Mod Culture.
The Horrors weren’t The Horrors back then. I went back home and went to Junk Club one night, and it was amazing. Instantaneously you could tell there was something there that had been missing for a long time. The town had been homogenised, it was very dissatisfying with the bland all encompassing blanket of Smooth RnB and that kind of thing. It steamrollered out everything else, and then this group of kids started doing something different for no other reason than they felt a magnetism for it. It was an organic process. Rhys and some of those guys would come up to London and were quite big on the mod scene, but it would go back to Southend and transmogrify into something else and then influence other people. I found it fascinating. And if you find something fascinating, you’ve got to capture it then and there otherwise you might miss it. The last day of my exhibition ‘Southend’s Underground’ was the last day of Junk Club. A lot of characters moved on, some moved up to London. But the ripple effect of that scene can be found everywhere, from Dior to other bands. You could tell so many of those people were going to become something, they had the spark; they just needed something to ignite. And they did it because they loved it, not for any commercial interest.

You’ve shot a variety of people from a range of backgrounds and tribes. Is there a particular group you feel a particular bond with or have a preference to shoot?
Not really. One of the fascinating things about photography is that it enables you to look into the lives of others. It’s fabulous, I mean, like you. You’ve got heroes, I’ve got heroes, but with our jobs you can go into peoples lives and touch them…but not in a sexual way, for the record! For me, I idolised The Jam when I was younger, but recently I’ve been working with Paul Weller and it’s like ‘Jesus! This is amazing! Paul Weller!’ I believe in heroes, which sounds lame, but I want to have heroes. But at the same time, I want to celebrate real people. And Junk Club was exactly that. But sometimes you get a phone call asking if you want to photograph Scarlett Johansson, and that’s pretty amazing.

As a photographer do you consciously watch out for movements that happen like Junk club, or is it something that transpires naturally?
I don’t actively pursue things. I have no idea what’s happening on the metal scene because I have no interest in that. I’m a bit idealistic, but I do what I want to do, and what interests me. You have to be careful what you wish for, for example if you took a real interest in teapots, and spent your life photographing teapots then people are going to know you as the teapot photographer and there may not be a chance to expand from that niche. I like to move around. I had an interest in body builders, and I actually did a photography project for Amelia’s Magazine. Amelia came up with the title, which was brilliant, called ‘Physical culturists’. What inspired me to do that was a bodybuilder I knew. He was coming up for a competition and put so much energy into it, but people tend to mock bodybuilders a lot, but it takes real dedication to do that. So I wanted to portray them in a heroic kind of way. I showed the pictures to Amelia, and she liked them, so I took the project further for the magazine. It wasn’t ridiculing them; it was about showing that they are also really dedicated.
It’s a bit like this chap I know from Southend, and they call him the Bagpipe Man. He used to drive around on a massive tricycle motorbike, which had a car engine in it, playing bagpipe music. He had a Mohican and a kilt on. It turned out that he had his penis and tentacles pierced eighteen times. Whenever he went into a bar, he’d lift his kilt up and smash a beer glass. I thought to myself ‘that’s quite unusual’ for the same reason. He’s an outsider, but also kind of a hero. I entered a photograph of him into a competition with the same sentiment and some editor put a comment next to the entry ‘from some pea brained optimist’!
Well, I think it’s quite good to be a pea-brained optimist as a photographer. A lot of photography has become very sterile. What with how much we can manipulate photographs with computers, a lot of the beauty is gone. The dirt, the mistakes – that can make a great photograph.

Some artists I’ve spoken to lately talk about the loss of personality in art with the digital age. Do you work digitally or tend to use film?
I embrace digital culture, most of what I do is digital. But it should be viewed as a tool, it should enhance what you’re doing but not be the heart of it. However the notion of error is frowned upon in a digital context, whereas in film error is a part of photography.

There was a quote recently that I read that said ‘A camera does not make a photographer and Photoshop doesn’t make a designer.’ If you had to sum up what makes a good photographer, how would you define that?
Someone who likes what they do. The camera and Photoshop is the peripheral, it’s the thing inside that drives it. It’s your heart, your soul and your viewpoint. It’s like a meat mincer; you take all your life and your influences, bung it in the top – the cupcake you had from when you four, the music that changed your life – all that stuff. You take it all, put it in, crank it through and then out of it comes your art, and your outlook. That’s the most vital thing. And if you lose your sanity through it, that’s the most devastating thing. You can get another camera, another computer, but if you lose your mind then that’s a big problem. I guess being a good photographer is having a vision inside that you have to communicate.

For someone who has been so successful as photographer, do you ever think about the legacy you would like to leave behind?
That’s an interesting question that I’ve actually been thinking about. I’ve made a will and everything! I thoroughly recommend it too, great fun. You think about it as an artist, after you die, what happens to your work? I think everyone wants to leave behind something, which is a resonance to themselves. I’ve captured moments in time, for other people to look at in the future. And I think that’s enough.

With all the different work you’ve done, and the artists you’ve worked with, you must have some good stories. What’s the weirdest encounter you’ve had?
One time I was doing a photoshoot in Iceland with The Propellerheads, and after the shoot we’re going to this party. So we go around to someone’s house, knock on the door and this woman opens the door shouting ‘Come in!’, and it’s Bjork! It’s not particularly weird, but it’s one of those great strange things when you go to Iceland and find yourself in Bjork’s house. It’s a very weird life, but I tend to live in the now and not think ahead, aside from planning out my funeral. I stay grounded, I’m never going to run off and buy four houses.

Was there ever a point when you were pursuing photography where you felt like you wanted to pack it in and get a stable job?
Well, when I started I was living in a cheap house in Golder’s Green whilst doing internships. I had no money, signed on to the dole whilst I tried to make it as a photographer. But after a short period of time, they were like ‘Well, unless you get a job at Tesco’s, we’re going to take away your money’ which was horrible because I had worked so hard to get the point where I’d nearly made it to be told to work in Tesco’s! Thankfully soon after that, I became a full time assistant and began making enough money to live. A lot of it comes down to timing; you need to know when to push and when to pull. You never want to be blindly ambitious either, you don’t want to steamroll through anybody. You meet people like that, and it’s just not a good way of conducting yourself. It’s a long game, it’s not about getting to the top quickly, and it’s about making it but having longevity. Doing a job like this is like going up a ladder, if you knew how high it was you probably wouldn’t start in the first place! The trick is to only look two rungs ahead, and keep going.

My final question, is what advice would you give to young creative’s starting out?

Do what you want to do, and follow your instincts. Follow your heart and don’t compromise yourself.

Categories ,amica lane, ,bjork, ,Dean Chalkley, ,Junk Club, ,Mod Culture, ,Paul Weller, ,photography, ,Scarlett Johansson, ,Sixties, ,Southend, ,The Book Club, ,the horrors, ,The Jam, ,The Propellerheads

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Amelia’s Magazine | Inside The Book Club: How East London’s coolest new arts venue came to be

Illustration by Rachel Lewis

I live in a state of perpetual disappointment that I was born in Hounslow in 1986, information pills see and not New York in 1943. In my dream life, I would be sitting in New York culture hotspots; watching The Velvet Underground one night, Ginsberg the next and have a general sense of anticipation about the evolution of the cultural revolution, which took place in small multifaceted venues mostly situated within Greenwich Village. Up until recently my ambitions to sit in such establishments, smoking cigarettes and experiencing ‘happenings’ looked as if they would continue to go by unactualised. That was until I stumbled across The Book Club, located in Leonard Street just off Old Street. The smoking is still out (damn you Patricia Hewitt, you wretched dream crushing hag) but the combination ‘drinking and thinking’ as The Book Club have put it, has finally been realised this side of the Nixon administration and the Atlantic. From the stylish exposed brickwork to the Ping Pong table, The Book Club manages to pull off the feat of being both effortlessly cool but without any trace of pretension. For those who want to experience a great night out without either running into a pack of slobbering drunken suits or the juxtaposing hipsters with their castrating drain pipes, The Book Club is the perfect inclusive venue for the patron who wishes to have a side order of intellectual stimulation with their excursions. As a journalist, I often worry about being a sop about things I really enjoy. If I’m nice about everything then I will never grab Walter Cronkite’s ghost by the balls and dismantle society as we know it, which is part of my vague and possibly ill-conceived master plan. But, once again, I am foiled by my own enthusiasm for how novel The Book Club is within a sea of mediocre venues and then once again by how lovely both of my interviewee’s are. It’s a nice thing when you find out that really awesome people run a really awesome venue. And there goes my future Pulitzer. Damn you, sentimental heart, damn you. Whatever your interest; be it life drawing, yoga classes, speed dating, Science lectures or film, The Book Club probably has something within it’s itinerary for you. Mightily impressed by all this venue represents, I sit down with the brains behind the operation, Liat Chen- the art producer and Heather Lawton – the creative director to talk about how The Book Club came into being.

I’d like to start by finding out how you conceptualised the idea of The Book Club: Heather: It was literally that I had come back from a trip in New York and I saw how different things were there, you could go to a café in the daytime and have a sandwich and go back in the evening and the lights are down, a DJ is playing and things are really kicking off. The venue hasn’t changed in anyway, it’s just finding a venue that can go through the different phases that you could go personally go through in the day; having coffee, having lunch, then partying in the evening. In the past, people have said that it couldn’t be done in one venue but I knew it could, and I think that’s what people want. You don’t necessarily want to bar hop all night, you just want to be somewhere and relax. This venue was originally a fine dining restaurant and then the recession hit the area. The corporate cards dried up, and there was no need for that type of restaurant in this area. So I had the idea that we could make a venue which brought people together who had similar interests, which is where the name The Book Club came along; somewhere that was quite inclusive and more than somewhere you go to drink. People want more now, with the recession, people want more from a night out than splashing the cash and getting wasted. They want to experience new events and meet likeminded people.

In terms of bringing on board the artists, how did that come about? Did you have a preconceived idea of what sort of artists and nights you wanted to host or did that come along later? Liat: For me it was quite clear, as I was coming from an area that specialised in subculture, which was when I was working for PYMCA for five years. PYMCA is a global research based company, which collects and archives youth culture imagery from all over the world and documents fashion, lifestyles, music and subculture movements dating back to the 50s. So I have been and continue to be inspired by them. I’m very passionate about these areas and that inspired the initial exhibitions we had. Dean Chalkley was the perfect match for those interests, whose exhibition is on currently, but in the future I’m interested in taking a different direction; currently I’m very interested in Pop Art.

The Book Club is very experimental in what you’ve chosen to do, it’s not just standard art, you have a whole range of activities. They all have an alternative appeal to those interested in subculture, but they are quite diverse. How did that work out? Heather: We’re always very open about the art that’s one the wall’s, the DJ’s that play and the promoters we bring on board. We wanted to be unconventional. London, let alone Shoreditch, is saturated with DJ’s banging out the same old thing every weekend. If you look at our weekend listings, there’s very unconventional things going on; like Swap-A-Rama Razzmatazz which is a swap night, you come along in whatever you’re wearing and be willing to give it all away in exchange for a completely new outfit at the end of the evening. We also have things like the Electro Swing night – it’s trying to bring different things into the area as Shoreditch got so rinsed with minimal techno nights and the area seemed to die a little bit, so we wanted to bring it back, and it worked. We have crazy queues every weekend now and it’s fun. Not everything has to be so serious.

Liat: For me, it’s not just about the art; it’s also about whom you’re working with. I want to work with people who have a really strong vision and…I guess a beautiful soul for lack of better words. I want to learn about what I’m doing, and create something really worthwhile. I don’t just want to put images on the wall; I want to bring the right people – from the creators to the audience – together. I want to make the space inviting and fresh. For the workshops, it was completely new to me. The life drawing is really popular. For something like that in most places you have to pay for a full course and it takes place in a sterile environment but here you can pay weekly and drink a glass of wine at the same time. Also the Science night which is a really interesting lecture. The lecturer invited all of us to Dover to search for crystals last time, so the venue is really open for every type of person with a wide range of interests, we’re not just a club or a bar, and there is everything here.

Illustration by Luke James

Is there any direction that you haven’t explored yet that you would like to try? Liat: Well I’m moving on more from subculture to Pop Art. For the next exhibition the whole space will change. It’s been black and white here for some time, and next we’re going to explode with different colours. The next show is City of Abacus, which will be done by the singer V V Brown and illustrator David Allain. It’s a graphic novel that will be released at the end of the year. After that we have the exhibition ‘The Nancyboy Decade’, which is the artwork of Nancyboy: very bright, very vibrant.

How have you found combining a bar and a gallery in one space? Liat: It was quite a shock for me, who was used to working in a gallery. It was the same theme, building a beautiful space and bringing work together cohesively. But I found that after the private view, not many people would come. Here it is the opposite; the amount of recognition that the artist receives is unbelievable. The audience is completely diverse, from young kids to families to the elderly; the work is exposed to a wide demographic. But when I walk by on Friday night and see the place so packed, I have to close my eyes! But the art is always fine; people are very respectful to the work.

Heather: Sometimes people who are going out for a drink here don’t know that they’re also going into a gallery, so they get a lot more than a standard night out.

There’s a great community feel here, it feels so relaxed and with a great energy that feels so inclusive. How did you foster that atmosphere? Heather: You can’t put your finger on it. We had a clear concept, but we targeted creative people. People are into similar things in these circles, so it works when you bring them together.

Liat: Well first of all, you have to put the right people together from the grass roots. Heather and I work exceptionally well together, supporting each and stimulating ideas.

Heather: Also we all really believe in what we’re doing. We know where we want to go out, so we built a place that we would want to come to, and that our friends would want to come to.

Liat: The people who come, and the people behind the scenes all believe in what we’re doing. We believe in the art, the music, and the atmosphere. If I feel the right energy, the right intuition, then I go for it. I have to have passion and belief in my projects.

Heather: We could just open somewhere and sit back thinking the work is all done but we don’t. Every day we sit down, and analysing every aspect of what’s going on. Did the DJ play the right songs? Was the tutor at a workshop giving a good class? It’s not sitting back and allowing things to happen, we continue to helm the direction that we want The Book Club to follow.

Liat: We aren’t trying to be edgy, we aren’t trying to be cool, we’re being authentic to ourselves and people respond well to it.

Heather: All of our staff have an interest in something we’re doing here, either art, music or film. A lot of them are in art school or fashion school. We don’t care if you’re a fashionista or anything like that, but we want our staff to be interested in what it is that we’re doing. Some of the bar stuff are interns, they help with the posters. We’re a community within ourselves, and that atmosphere spreads through the venue.

Next Thursday the 15th The Book Club will be throwing a party to celebrate Dean Chalkley’s exhibition, which will feature live music, dancing and another opportunity to absorb the exhibition. For further information on upcoming events, please check The Book Club’s Website and the listings section at Amelia’s Magazine.

Categories ,60s, ,art, ,City of Abacus, ,david allain, ,Dean Chalkley, ,exhibitions, ,galleries, ,ginsberg, ,heather lawton, ,liat chen, ,nancyboy, ,nights out, ,PYMCA, ,subculture, ,swap shop, ,The Book Club, ,the new faces, ,The Velvet Underground, ,venues, ,visual music, ,vv brown, ,youth

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