Text and photography: Ewen Spencer
WHEN THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN, I wasn’t long out of art school. It was 1998, I’d graduated the year before. I was flipping between London and Brighton, visiting Paris a lot, partying quite a bit and taking pictures of my friends. In that sense, magazines were a logical conclusion for me. I didn’t want to go and photograph for the Sunday Times or anything like that. I was interested in style mags – like The Face and i-D.
I approached Sleazenation magazine straight away. A guy called Steve Lazarides, who was Picture Editor there, gave me a bag of film and, based on the pictures I showed him, said “Go and make pictures of these parties for us.” So I just went off, and that was the beginning of a two, three-year journey photographing the subcultural.
Back then, there were a lot of things happening in different parts of London – almost on top of one another. You could find little scenes and club nights that were specifically oriented to a certain musical genre, but also a certain person with a specific look and sartorial approach. It felt like a very exciting time – I was in my mid-20s and breaking through, if you like – so I just photographed a lot. I was living in Brighton, raising a young son, and travelling up to these clubs and these scenes at the weekend.
I’d been to this one night a few times. It was called Queer Nation, in a basement club called Substation South, which was in Brixton. Apparently, its purpose was to allow gay Black men in South London to meet white guys. At least that’s what they told me. Anyway, it was quite a hardcore gay night – it was lively, people were really smashed and the music was an intense, hard-house sound. There was a lot of dancing and action, so it was great for images, and just great fun to be around.
For me, any kind of raw human emotion is fascinating. Seeing people having that kind of fun, expressing themselves in that kind of way – it’s enthralling, isn’t it? It’s also kind of revolutionary when people are behaving like that, coming together and feelin
