“she seemed ok, but who knows how the rest of her night panned out”

A Sunday Times stalwart for nearly two decades, photojournalist Peter Dench has produced more than his fair share of honest, and at times startling imagery for the broadsheet, capturing the best and worst of contemporary Britain. One of his more controversial magazine covers has thrown the spotlight on a national student campaign aimed at reducing sexual harassment. “Looking at my work, you can see there’s a lot of Britishness in it and a lot along the theme of alcohol,” says the 44-year-old. “So they knew that this commission would really suit me.”

Teamed with journalist Katie Glass, Peter Dench headed to freshers’ weeks in Brighton and Bristol to investigate ‘The new rules of sex at University’. The impetus had been an ‘I Heart Consent’ campaign, spearheaded by the National Union of Students to provoke discussions about sexual consent at UK universities, after it was reported sexual harassment on campus had reached epidemic levels.

“We were there to find out whether people actually knew what the ‘new rules’ were, how clear the guidelines were, and whether that behaviour was being adhered to on a boozy night out,” he explains.

The cover shot was taken in Brighton on an Olympus OMD-EM5II and the equivalent of a 35mm lens (17mm) with flash, in the early hours of the morning. “We’d been to a freshers’ event at the end of the Brighton pier, and we were walking from there to a freshers’ event at a nightclub when we bumped into this girl featured on the cover. Her name is Sophie Weir.

“She had a conversation with Katie and I asked to take the photo of her. It was a collaboration as far as I see it; I asked her to pose in various ways, and she did so. The friend was a bit more animated and she just leapt in for a couple of frames, so it was all very high-spirited. We were there about six minutes and this was the shot the magazine chose.” Asked why he thinks it made the cut, Dench suggests, “She’s quite a striking girl. I think it gets the message across starkly and quickly, and hopefully excites the reader to turn the pages.”

But days later when the feature ran, Weir’s mother got in touch to complain that her daughter had no recollection of the photograph being taken, or the verbal exchange. Dench says, “She seemed pretty lucid. It was obvious she’d had a couple of drinks along the way, but she was upright, responsive, and communicative and she seemed okay. But who knows how the rest of her night panned out.”