Drill, Community & Pepys Estate
with Freddie Miller
A new exhibition in Deptford explores architecture and community on the Pepys Estate. For photographer Freddie Miller this took a subcultural approach, choosing to approach the local communities of the estate in an effort to uplift stories of everyday counterculture.
The work, now on show at Gareth Gardner Gallery, explores the daily motions of young people trying to make it as the next big Drill stars through portraits and documentation of modern-day living. A friction arises - young people creating permanence through a musical legacy while facing innercity developments to home and housing.
Interview by Esta Maffrett | 06.10.23
How did you get into photography and what drew you to it as a medium?
I’ve always been drawn to film cameras. I loved messing around with old cameras when I was a teenager and I became interested in the process of taking photos and documenting things. I’m really interested in unseen things, communities and subcultures that people tend to overlook or have preconceptions about. In documenting I'm trying to get the perspective of the people within the subculture, see it on their level and where they’re at rather than tell the story from the outside. I enjoy celebrating these different communities and their differences. I want to elevate alternative ways of living and the stories that come with it. That’s my entry point and then I aim to do it in a visually engaging way and make good photos. My younger brother Henry was a brilliant photographer and one of my original sources of inspiration to take pictures. He has now passed. In a way my photography enables me to remain close to him as I knew he would have loved what I am doing! As a person he had time for anyone and his photos celebrated the overlooked and ordinary - he continues to inspire me every day to take photos.
I studied History. In my last year I took a course on subcultural theory, subversive youth cultures like the punk movement, anarchy and rebellion. That’s probably where I first got into counterculture and resistance against authority. I love the way people resist power in their own authentic ways and live life on their own terms because capitalism is homogenising culture so much.
What was the first subculture you focused on in a photography project?
I got back into photography just after lockdown and was trying to find my voice when I became really interested in train spotters. I became obsessed with social media trainspotters, these people who really go for it with their subculture, which made me think about the people who don’t become famous or online. I investigated where these people hung out, going round different train stations and talking to people. Next I met Mudlarkers, the people that go to the River Thames and find ancient treasures, that became my next project. I did a project on people who decorate trucks with crazy decorations and at the moment I’m doing one on pagan religions and alternative forms of spirituality and religion.
There was a lot of aspirational conversation, about how everyone wants to make it big as musicians, a lot of it was just chatting rubbish, talking about the estate and the people there.
How did your current work in the exhibition come to be?
I was in Deptford documenting the folk event called Deptford Jack In The Green which is about the spring season and fertility. I bumped into a guy there who owns the Gareth Gardner Gallery which specialises in architecture photography and he had an idea for an exhibition marking 50 years since Tony Ray-Jones photos of the Pepys Estate in Deptford. There were a lot of issues with this estate which was built in the sixties as one of these high rise living utopian developments for the future. Tony Ray-Jones took these really quite dystopian photographs of it showing the residents in really gritty 35mm black and white. The photos show young people running around and playing in the reality of how the vision had turned out. So the Royal Institute of British Architecture is holding a retrospective of these photographs just 50 years on and Gareth had the idea to revisit the estate now and get a sense for what it’s like. He asked if I'd be interested in documenting it from a people’s perspective alongside three other photographers who are looking at the architectural landscape.
I had quite a loose brief; I wanted to photograph young people on the estate today but not fall into the classical representations of estate living. Instead I was inspired by work that was celebratory, full of colour and sensitive. I was also keen to do it in a way that would benefit people, I didn’t want to go in and take a bunch of photographs for the gain of the exhibition and just for the sake of documenting. I wanted to collaborate. I sent a bunch of messages explaining the project and the people that got back to me was this group of aspiring Drill artists of the estate. They really wanted photographs they could use for music promotion so there was something in it for them and it became mutually beneficial. I met with Skit in the community cafe, a really important area in the estate because there aren’t many community spaces, which is now closed. I asked if he was up for the project and he explained he was trying to make it as a Drill artist and needed photos, the relationship was built from there really. I met the rest of his friends and the first couple of times my camera didn’t come out of my bag, a lot of the time i wasn’t thinking about taking photos. I spent three months this summer going to the estate, hanging out with them, collaborating on the images, the guys showing me different parts of the estate.
Once you were shooting, how did the people and the estate influence the project?
There was a documentary on the BBC in the 2000s called The Tower: A Tale Of Two Cities which shows the divide between the residents of the original estate as the other has been sold off for redevelopment but it’s very sensationalist. I found a review on IMDb from one of the residents saying the focus was on a very small number of people, usually the most underprivileged, and their issues were exaggerated. You can’t deny the issues of inner city living. I found on the estate you could feel a lack of care, lack of investment from local authorities, the youth club has been closed for years and the community cafe was closing down - all of this has an effect on the people. But at the same time there’s a really strong community and a lot of respect amongst the residents.
There’s a lot of stuff in the press at the moment about Drill music, the lyrics and the kids involved in it. I was keen to represent them as a group of mates because that was how I knew them. I wanted to show them hanging out and laughing rather than feeding into the debate about controversial lyrics. There was a lot of aspirational conversation, about how everyone wants to make it big as musicians, a lot of it was just chatting rubbish, talking about the estate and the people there.
If you could put one object into the Museum of Youth Culture what would it be and why?
My camera because it’s been the most enduring and the thing I've consistently had through meeting and documenting all these different cultures.
Freddie’s project The District is on show as part of the Boundary Conditions exhibition exploring relationships between people, place and architecture in the Pepys Estate at Garth Gardner Gallery. The show is on until 15th October 2023.
You can follow Freddie Miller here.
