A word from the artist
Currently based in Bedfordshire (originally from Northamptonshire), I’ve always been interested in scooters/the 60s and the music (probably because my mum had a Vespa in the 60s). I really loved looking at the pictures and decided very early on I’d have one too. By coincidence she also had what I decided was a very cool camera, which still sits on my shelf to this day! She has a lot to answer for!
Move forward a few years and my older sister was hanging around with local Mods/ Scooterboys (early 80s), so our house usually had one or two scooters outside. Over time I fell in love with Lambrettas; for me, the shape was perfect and I went on to own various models.
As I did my school homework, my sister would be at the other end of the living room playing and dancing to records (Motown, Northern Soul and the odd bit of Mod Revival) which, musically, left a mark on me. Being the creative type, I’d go into school with my bag covered in writing and pictures drawn in biro (usually song titles or band names); one end of my bag had Trojan Explosion written on it and none of the kids in my year had any idea what it meant! I left school and went to college to study art and design, meaning I could also do a GCSE in photography – just what I wanted!
On leaving college, photography took a back seat as I didn’t have a darkroom and wanted to follow my dream of being a graphic designer, which I did, and still do as well as photography. While working as a designer I was reintroduced to photography (by now was digital). This really excited me; I used Photoshop at work, so now I could combine my love of photography with my job.
A few years of learning new techniques, then a friend, Rob Glover, asked me if I’d like to photograph his Mod/Northern night. What could be better; a night of great music, dancing and photography all in one! The images looked great, I loved it and started going to as many Northern Soul nights as I could to photograph them.
This was great but I wanted something a bit more Mod, so having done a few scooter rallies in the 90s (including the IoW), I decided to look at something different, which is where the Brighton Mod Weekender came in. The rest, as they say, is history.
WHY NOW?
As I photographed the early years of this book I got to thinking: “There’s loads of books out there documenting the original 60s Mods (and quite rightly so), but there wasn’t really anything showing what’s happening now!” A friend said: “That’s because we’re all old!” Jokingly, I replied: “But if you look at this book in another 10 years’ time, you’ll be saying: “God, I look young in that picture!” I figured there’s probably loads of pictures out there, but you don’t see them because they’re all on people’s phones! So, I thought I’d basically share what I saw and shot over 10 years, which as a timescale, felt big enough and interesting enough to be in a book, so who knows, maybe I’ll do a 20-year one also, then we really will be old!!