The starving, the dispossessed, the oppressed those with no hope but their indomitable spirit. I had witnessed, photographed, and wept for the victims of the world. I had shared food, hardship, laughter, friendship with people from widely different cultures. I could no longer retreat into the strangely reassuring idea that I was a victim (in some indeterminate way) of this society and so forego personal responsibility by posturing as an Outsider. I returned from the Third World looking at a broader framework than before, and with a touch of culture-shock. Really different: worse, better, harder, more dangerous, shocking, fabulous, relaxed, harmonious… A kaleidoscope of experiences, of often extraordinary power, could not help but change my relationship to England. I did not have any parallel reality against which to properly assess my position.Įxposure to other cultures, the massive shifts in relationships to people, the direct confrontation with the fact that things are different. Previously my work had been focused on particulars of Britain: poverty, sub-culture. Then I started to travel in the Third World. Not into complacency, but into a form of understanding a larger, clearer picture of one’s society. So, gradually, the alienation – so much part of my childhood – faded. People died before I was able to properly express to them the strength of my admiration and love. Resentments, which impeded my perception of worth in others, began to fall away, sometimes too late. It was gradually buried in a dissolute and extended adolescence, and later made ridiculous by a growing sense of personal worth. My childhood sensitivity to racial difference was not all-consuming, it merely exerted a steady pressure throughout those years. So, in the heartland of Anglo Saxon England I forged the peculiar bonds that bind me to this country. In the small seaside town where we lived there was no ethnic community into which I could comfortably retreat. My father was English, a military officer who abandoned my Burmese mother, and brought me back to England at an early age. I am sure most kids have this feeling sometimes, but perhaps those who carry it longest and deepest are the ones driven to write, comment, photograph. True, I was not black I did not wear exotic costumes, but as a child I felt isolated. “I suppose that if you are not entirely white, you are never entirely British. The bouncers moved in, one tried to get my film. I was photographing a group of dancers, nothing special, and then they started making exaggerated pointing gestures towards me a new dance? It took me a few seconds to register that they were gesturing to events behind me where a scrap was going on. It was a successful club, I think it was run by Steve Strange and Boy George used to turn up there. “I used to hang out a bit in the Camden Place in North London. I also like that people have asked me if I photoshopped the dog in.” I was wandering about on the beach and wondered why this guy had decided to park himself here, so near to the donkeys? Was he going to eat his lunch, and what happened to his shoes? The dog sniffed into frame, performed and moved on, and so did I. “Nothing dramatic happens here, there is no dramatic color or lighting, in fact it is all pretty banal, though there is a lot of detail, and that’s what I like. To complete our time-capsule from the 1980s, the original introduction to the book, published in 1989, recalls the epoch-specific “public rituals we employ in the pursuit of happiness” from a hedonistic decade, and how the photographer navigated Britain from an almost-outsider’s perspective. Here, Steele-Perkins looks back at the work, and discusses the images that, to this day, still capture his attention. I think I made a couple of frames before being pushed and elbowed aside by the mob of fans, press and security.” The photo was taken at the Conservative Party ball in Blackpool at the moment she made her entrance. I could argue that while she is clearly centre frame the photograph is as much about the acolytes and her effect on them, than it is about her. The one exception is Margaret Thatcher as she defined Britain in the 80s in a way nobody else did. “It was a deliberate choice as I wanted the book to be about ‘ordinary’ people. “There is only one famous person in the book,” says Chris Steele-Perkins of his photobook The Pleasure Principle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |