May 21, 2024 |
The ‘80s were fertile territory for cultural photographers. From Ken Russell to Nick Knight, evidence of rising hybrid guises and youth cultures remains, immortalised by the lens of an analog camera. One of the most influential British club and street photographers of the time was Derek Ridgers whose portraits of British youth have become a revered and rather precious document of style and culture in 1980s England. Ridgers captured elusive moments unfolding in legendary night clubs like Le Beat Route, The Batcave, Taboo, Hell, Sacrosanct, Billy’s and Blitz, as well as on the street, glazing his unfeigned sights in photographic form.
Now, the 10 Magazine contributor has released an intimate dossier of his time spent doggedly documenting the subcultures that ran amok the capital’s streets and after-hours drinking dens between 1978 and 1987. From skinheads, punks and post-punks to new romantics, goths, Blitz Kids and fetishists, Ridgers’ straight-up style of photography becomes a “visual record of London club culture”. Broadly based on the now out of print book 78/87 London Youth, which he released in 2014, Derek Ridgers: The London Youth Portraits (2024), published by ACC Art Books, is his fourteenth tome and features an entirely new selection of images pulled from the tens of thousands of images that make up Ridgers’ extensive and wide ranging archive – many of which are previously unseen.
Inside, a disruptive narrative of the ‘80s emerges, told through candid portraiture. Club Kids in barely-there PVC trench coats, dark eyed fetishists in studded satin lingerie and leather with flogger whips tucked under their suspender belts, sexually indeterminate new romantics in ball gowns with artful, unruly hairstyles denoting vague attempts at glamour and pale faced tatted skinheads in skinny ties with pin-back button-covered peacoats. Across 176 pages, the oversized volume documents Ridgers’ vision of England’s seminal youth culture from the height of punk to the birth of acid house, each image a tribute to the trials and triumphs of youth.
The forward, written by Irish journalist Sean O’Hagan, reads, “Derek Ridgers once described himself as ‘one of life’s observers, constantly on the margins with a camera’. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that his outsider temperament led him to the more exotic individuals who flourished in London’s nocturnal demi-monde from the late-1970s post-punk era to the more flamboyant club culture of the 1980s.” O’Hagan continues, “[Ridgers’] book is a document of a time and a place that now seems impossibly distant, even as its traces linger among today’s more knowing, endlessly referential, globally interconnected pop landscape. Time passes, styles change, ordinary people, once young and fearless, fade into the maw of history. Photographs remain; a complex kind of evidence, brimming with clues, details, and signifiers; in this instance, they evoke a particularly creative period in the history of British youth culture, which, in all its tribal differences, was essentially about belonging and identity.”
Encased in a denim-like hardback cover with a white debossed title and Ridgers’ a photo of Tuinol Barry on King’s Road, Chelsea taken in 1983, this impressive compendium of portraits will transport you back in time. From the flop of a fringe to anarchic clubland scenes, Ridgers’ intimate perception of subcultures offers a glimpse into the unadulterated defiance of British youths.
This Thursday May 23, Ridgers will be signing copies of the book from 6-8pm at The Photographer’s Gallery. Purchase your copy of Derek Ridgers: The London Youth Portraits here.
Photography by Derek Ridgers.
