Ewen Spencer on new commission, Kick over the statues

Since kicking off his photography career shooting nightlife for iconic late 90s, early 00s mags The Face and Sleazenation, subculture obsessive Ewen Spencer has kept his lens firmly on the seedier side of youth culture, from the Moet-clutching clubbers of the UK garage scene to nascent grime MCs battling it out in Jammer’s dungeon; from the moped-riding, bikini-wearing mob kids of Naples to liquid-bodied Ballroom dancers in Rotterdam.

He has made short films including UK garage documentary Brandy & Coke for Dazed and Channel 4, Open Mike, about grime, Street, Sound and Style, a four episode series commissioned by iD for Channel 4 and self-published a stack of photo books.

For Brighton Photo Biennial, Photoworks and Brighton gallery Fabrica co-commissioned Ewen to cast and shoot Londoners at last month’s Notting Hill Carnival and young Liverpudlians for photo project Kick over the statues. We caught up with Ewen to talk about the past, present and future of youth culture.

Firstly, why Carnival?

I think the area is due a revisit. Every year, over one million people descend on west London to celebrate the plurality of the city, and in turn the nation. It’s an incredible event that denotes the history of style and youth culture as a setting. If you consider this area of West London as a timeline, it has generated a lot of key moments within popular culture stretching back to Colin McInnes; Absolute Beginners, bohemian squats, jazz and the beginnings of the Modernist movement in the late 1950s.

Tell us about the people you shot.

Some of the people I know from continually casting and looking for young people that have a style or attitude. Others I have happened upon spending time at Carnival and simply stopping them to say hello. I might make the picture there and then at Carnival, or I may arrange to meet them later at a different location along the route of Carnival weeks later to make the portrait.

The series is going to be shown in Fabrica on custom-built billboards. Why did you want your images displayed in this way?

The billboards are a way of referencing the outside. Fabrica is a gallery in the centre of Brighton. It was a Regency period church that has been functioning as a contemporary art gallery for over 20 years. I wanted to recreate an idea of the street within the gallery. We’ve had outdoor print advertising hoarding built to show the prints and a soundsystem installed for events and to play a short film that I’ve put together with my son. The images become very large scale on the boards and begin to reveal the minutiae of the clothing and accessories worn by the subjects. 

Kick over the statueswas shot in Liverpool and London. Do you think youth culture lives predominantly in cities now? 

Youth culture lives on the internet right now. Its interesting to me that it has become something of a hypothesis when current philosophical debate often discusses a similar sentiment regarding capitalism or religion. 

As the internet — I’m thinking particularly of Instagram — disseminates trends, has youth culture become harder to document?

Currently youth is networked, the level of research is vast and most kids who are concerned enough know their stuff. In the same way as the early mods would disregard one another for wearing something “old hat”, the new breed discipline themselves on understanding the process of youth culture and style historically beyond that of any Dick Hebdige (total respect, Dick!). So youth is networked, it’s connected to its own, that’s why it’s also invisible to many, just as the Blackpool Mecca Highland Rooms in 1978 would have been a peculiar experience for any normal clubber at that time, because only a few hundred people knew about it and were prepared to travel from Dundee or Streatham to experience the kind of music, style and bond that was developed there. Exclusivity is the requisite of youth. To document it is to try and understand it or to have an awareness of youth. We stay younger for longer today, so maybe it isn’t so hard for me to document it. It’s predominantly documented by the self today. Everyone is self publishing and broadcasting to some degree. 

Tricky one: what is the future of style?

I have no idea really, other than what has happened before. It will keep evolving, possibly referencing the past to become something new again. 

And how about your own work — what’s next?

I’m looking to my roots in the North East of England. Going back to Newcastle to make pictures of where I have come from which might help to determine where I’m going next.