Paul Hill considers…
‘Best friends beneath a poster of their favourite pop star, Rick Astley’, by Bill Stephenson
I was watching Strictly Come Dancing recently when the 1980s star Rick Astley popped up, and my mind was transported to Bill Stephenson’s recently published Streets in the Sky book I’d just been reading. I probably hadn’t seen Astley on TV or in print for over 30 years, and there he was, looking just like the poster on this bedroom wall in Sheffield taken in 1988. What’s he on? I thought.
What makes the best photographic portraits memorable is that they ‘say’ something rather than just being a likeness. We can detect from this image that the girls wanted to be close to their idol and the next best thing was to be connected through a photo of him. But the picture portrays more than pre-pubescent idolatry because Bill allowed the girls to choose their pose.
Duality
Naturally they wanted to show that they are best mates, but this picture also reflects their environment and kids’ fashions of the day. Notice the Artex swirls that were so popular in post-WW2 housing. But above all this is an engaging image that shows both the psychological and emotional interior and the factual and descriptive exterior. No other medium can convey that duality so well.
Streets in the Sky contains portraits Bill made of the last tenants of Sheffield’s monumental Hyde Park Flats, before they were used as accommodation for the World Student Games in 1991. The flats, considered architecturally revolutionary at the time, were demolished a year later.
With a Hasselblad 500C and Fuji colour negative film, Bill adopted a considered direct approach that is a very familiar one today. However, colour and this overtly posed portrait style were comparatively rare in social documentary projects even in 1988.
As he recalls: ‘I developed a familiarity and intimacy with the residents, which I hope comes across in the portraits. I soon realised an on-the-wing street photography approach was completely wrong so I started talking to the tenants, attending meetings and attempted to become a “guest” in their community, less conspicuous, less
