JOHN INGLEDEW
Photographing fans ....... for life.
For decades John Ingledew has been an avid Chelsea fan and his camera has followed him along to every match. It's photographing what he knew and loved that allowed John to capture the moments that make the team. The everyday, sometimes special and sometimes ordinary, routines of the fans and families behind the club making it what it is. "Managers and players come and go but the one constant in it all is the fans, we are there for life."
John also turned his camera to the youth tribes of late 20th century Britain. His work is always underpinned by a real celebration of being devoted to a scene, a culture and a lifestyle.
Interview and text by Esta Maffrett | 18.03.2022
How did you get into photography?
I was at art school (St. Martins) in the 70’s, before that I hadn’t had access to a camera but at art school you could borrow one and I really took to it. I thought it was rather an amazing thing and I loved the process of taking pictures, then developing them and then printing in the darkroom. That it is alchemy, it is magic to see, to put a white piece of photographic paper into some liquid and this image appears in front of you, I really love that process and so I took to it.
I didn’t study photography. I don't think they would have let me on a photography course as I hadn't taken any pictures. I studied graphic design, I’d always loved magazines and the thing that got me into art school was my fanzine. In the 70’s there were a lot of fanzines that were coming out of punk, rock, two tone and the music of that time. Very much a Do It Yourself thing I’d been inspired by the fanzines that I’d seen and I’d made my own fanzine of cut up photos and type cut from the music papers. That was visually quite dynamic and so got me onto a graphic design course at St. Martin’s which is where I found out about photography. On your course you would do different things, you would look at typography, animation, a week of lettering - and then you would do a week of photography and then after a bit you begin to pick what you wanted to do. That’s when I took to photography.
One constant in your photography is the tribes of youth culture and young communities. Did your photography follow on from your own interests in this way?
We had really good teachers at college who said the first thing you should try to photograph is the things that you do, which I thought was quite interesting. The photography that you saw in magazines and newspapers was always sort of inaccessible, it was always kind of exotic locations and incredibly exotic looking models, everything which you had no access to. So the idea of someone saying ‘photography doesn’t have to be about that stuff, doesn’t have to be about that colour gloss, it can be about what you do’ was great. I loved live music and sport and so it came logically that I would photograph it. I’d always loved going to see music, there was this kind of build up and anticipation, then there would be this amazing reward of seeing something fantastic. Afterwards there was this exhilaration of all of that which I loved. Photographing live performances led me to punk rock culture, two tone culture and part of the skinner culture. I've got pictures from the 70’s of football and wrestling, we also would go to see the dog racing as part of the week's entertainment that was inexpensive. The football was 50p or a pound to get in, not like today where it’s 50 quid or 100 pounds. Again it was sort of 50p for the dog racing or wrestling, very inexpensive entertainment. I loved photographing that culture so it became my main early project, the youth culture that I was involved in.
Football was the project that I’ve sustained. Over four decades I've been going to see Chelsea play and still in twice in the last fortnight, it’s part of my life. I kind of think youth culture should be photographed by the participants, you should be that age group, you should be part of the culture. I think that it’s important that people look at themselves with photography, so really that early work of mine is where I'm a participant rather than going in as an observer.
Being a little bit older these days I see so many books and histories of that time I’ve now lived thorough, so much of the detailing of what’s amplified and important is not necessarily correct or part of the real experience of the participants. I think if you’re a participant you really understand the detailing and what’s important, the people who were the leaders rather than the followers. I was lucky enough to work for Chelsea, i had a real understanding of being a fan and what it was to be a fan. There was a real closeness to the fans because I was with them constantly home and away - travelling with them, going on away trips with them on the club coaches and going on the ferries and coaches for away games. I hope that comes through in the photos. I’ve always loved the way people celebrate their cultures in the way they dress, football fans have that particular way of choosing their clothes, even that thing of having different names but on the back of their shirts and wordplay about the team, all of those things. I love homemade stuff, like homemade banners, I love that kind of thing.
Do you feel like you’re capturing people in a vulnerable state when they’re in a group absorbed by a game or with their gang on Brighton Beach. Or is it the opposite and actually people are protected by the groups they’re in?
Let’s do the football first. Being in a football crowd is a brilliant experience. I think that the idea that you get there is this collective behaviour that you do in no other place in your life. It’s the only place I sing, the only place I chant, it’s the only place I'll embrace strangers when a last minute goal is scored. In live football there are these moments of being genuinely carefree of the world. I think the release of being able to shout and cheer and boo should be prescribed on the NHS, it’s a fantastic release and an absolutely fantastic piece of human activity. So I think photographing people in that state is rather fantastic and it should be celebrated. I hope in some of my crowd pictures you get all the human emotion at the football, you have absolute elation to devastation when you’re beaten by a last minute goal or you don’t play as well as you wish you had and you don’t win a trophy, it’s heartbreaking. I photograph people in crowds in tears, you have the whole spectrum of human emotion there. That’s maybe one of the really fantastic things about photographing that it’s all right there in front of you, this range of emotion. It’s not about twenty-two men kicking a ball, it’s about belonging, it’s about going to the same place, it’s the catching up on other people’s lives and bumping into your friends who have brought their grandkids for their first game. It’s as much about going to the pub before or the walk to the ground and travelling to the away ground. All of that is I think is incredibly important and i've always tried to photograph that. Managers and players come and go but the one constant in it all is the fans, we are there for life. The zine that I did with MYC I think calling it …….For Life was great because well it is for life. And it’s for all ages, some of the pictures that i’m most proud of is Pauline the badge lady. Every club has its own badge lady and you would see them on Match of the Day or the big match camera would always look at one particular fan who was decked out in club badges and woolly hats and everything. I’m really proud to photograph Pauline in the seventies, years later her daughter got in touch and I went to photograph her again. Because I photographed her they did a wonderful tribute in the Chelsea programme which I think without my photography would have never happened, so lovely things can come from a project. I think, again, it is a fantastic part of belonging that I think everyone needs in their life, you know?
In terms of the youth culture pictures I always ask people if I can take their photograph, or there will be a moment where something is passing. I think there are only three types of photograph - there are photographs that you see where there is a moment occurring, where elements come together to make a great photograph, often a surprising juxtaposition or the way the light is falling or the shape of things and you have the presence of mind to take it. The next sort of photograph is the picture that you wait for, where you see something and you feel it just needs a little bit more, needs people or someone to walk past. And the final one is the photographs that you construct and too often those are the ones where you say ‘Oh, can you move over here? Can you stand here? Can I just move you over?’ So there are only three types of pictures and I enjoy each type and think each type can work really well. I never want anyone to look vulnerable, I hope my pictures celebrate, I have no desire to take a picture that someone would not like, that’s not what I do. I like to celebrate things that perhaps other people wouldn’t photograph. With the Chelsea fans I hope that they’re all celebrating. Often as a photographer you choose to photograph someone because they’re so normal, they’re so everyday and they’re the pictures that people don’t take because that’s what they see all the time. Those are often the ones that when you do take them have more weight in the end because you look at what the people look like, what are they wearing, look how their haircuts are, look at how they’re reacting to each other. What seems normal at the time but ten years later, twenty years later it doesn’t and it becomes more interesting. So I hope my pictures are celebratory, I’d like to think that.
"It’s not about twenty-two men kicking a ball, it’s about belonging, it’s about going to the same place, it’s the catching up on other people’s lives and bumping into your friends who have brought their grandkids for their first game. It’s as much about going to the pub before or the walk to the ground and travelling to the away ground."
Much of your photography, in football or soho for example, are scenes and events that happen repetitively. How do you look for moments to capture in something you are repeatedly exposed to?
I think that gets back to there being three types of photo. Take my Soho pictures, there’s something brilliant about the layout of Soho in the way it takes the light, the exhibition that I did was called Streets Of Light. It was one of those things where I would go three or four times until the light was right to get one particular street and that’s waiting for a picture, knowing where great composition is and then waiting for it. Other times wonderful things just happen in front of you, being in a Café when all the fans come in to watch a game or being in the street when a particular thing happens in front of you. I’ve always had a camera with me for the last 40 years, that’s very important, now of course that’s not rare at all but to begin with it was relatively rare. At the football one of things on the list that you weren’t allowed to take in amongst knives, fireworks and all that was cameras. Occasionally I’d be stopped by a steward at the turnstile asking what I was doing with a camera, they’d be quite disarmed when I said i’m a photographer and they’d say ‘oh that’s alright then’. Sometimes you’d be asked ‘what are you taking photographs of?’ And I thought it was really quite interesting that they wouldn’t consider that the whole being a football ground was something I wanted to photograph. I often had my Dr. Martin laces taken off me outside the ground but never had my camera taken off me. Photographers are very good at noticing things, and it's often when you notice a new thing, even in a familiar place that you capture it.
You’re a teacher so I was wondering what advice would you give to aspiring photographers or anyone looking for inspiration?
I think it’s really important for young photographers to have their own projects. I think it's incredibly important that amongst the things that you are doing to earn a living, you have to have projects that you are passionate about, that have no client and possibly no end purpose. Those are the ones that are really worth pursuing and those are the ones that will help you produce your best work. I think when you look back at a lot of work that you’ve done for commerce, whether it’s gone on a magazine cover or it’s been used really big or it’s in an annual report, you think I got paid well for that but it doesn’t stand on its own like the projects you do for yourself. Out of my work I think the football project and the youth culture project are definitely my best work. A lot of the stuff that I did for commerce dates very quickly whereas the other work has a lot more authenticity and hopefully will last. The geography is really special because it lets you keep tiny slivers of time that otherwise would be lost. So these little slivers of time, particularly when you place them together, form a fantastic record of things that are special and special to you. I think it’s about finding what’s important to you. Every young person is involved in some piece of culture, it might be to do with music or technology, physical stuff like riding bikes, skateboarding, any of that stuff. That’s the stuff that is yours and is what you should be photographing.
It’s interesting now with Café Royal producing all those wonderful zines, small editions of different photographers' work that you see what a fantastic record people can have. I got the zine from Yann Morvan who was in London at exactly the same time when I was first photographing. He’s photographing outside concerts that I’d been to and it’s absolutely fantastic and very evocative of that era in a way that other photographers are not so much. Photography is amazing in that its value can grow and can evolve. I wish I had taken more photographs. That thing of when you had to think about it because you only had thirty-six pictures on a roll of film and you probably only had one roll with you - you had to ask ‘is this important enough?’ Now because of digital photography you’re completely free of that. So I think another piece of advice to young photographers is to take a lot of pictures.
Finally …. If you could put one object into the Museum of Youth Culture what would it be and why?
Well there is one object I've already donated and which I am incredibly proud to have donated and it is a lump of Carnaby Street from the mid to late seventies. They paved Carnaby Street with kind of gold rainbow colours and of course like every street in London, within about two years it was dug up for putting in new mains and electricity. And from looking rather amazing to begin with it looked appalling and so after about three years they decided to get rid of it. It’s celebrated in loads of photographs of the time. I donated a priceless lump of Carnaby Street from when I was walking past and I picked up and pinched a piece because I thought what a lovely piece of paved gold London. I’m very proud of that.
The other thing came from a friend of mine, she said ‘I don’t know what to do with this, it’s my teenage satchel!’ Every kid going to school has a bag, now kids today have their Nike bags and duffel bags or whatever. I hope someone’s photographing on their iPhone all the different bags that kids take to school these days. But this satchel is from the 1970’s and it’s got her boyfriend's name on it and it’s got reggae on it, it’s got the different bands that she followed. I think it’s an absolutely beautiful little object that perfectly captures being a sixteen year old kid and being in love in the seventies where you write your boyfriend's name on your satchel. I’m very proud to have helped get that in the museum and I think those things are very special and should be kept forever as they are charged with meaning. Those things that are homemade, back to homemade signs and clothes and outfits, are a very very special part of British culture and a thing we’re particularly good at. So I'm very proud to have helped get two things in the museum already.
