sanna charles
Always interested in the stories of those on the fringes of society, Sanna Charles was attracted to photographing people from a young age. After a fateful gig in Camden she began photographing live music and landed herself a job at NME, which in turn lead her to her first Slayer experience. Fast forward a decade and the result is God Listens To Slayer, an archive documenting their dedicated following across the UK and beyond.
For many the Slayer experience is transformative. Through her own love for the scene Sanna has managed to capture the experience authentically. Some of it is gnarly, in your face and loud but there are also intimate moments amongst fans; “I’ve just tried one thing to show the beauty in a situation that might not necessarily be perceived as a beautiful serene moment. I saw a lot of that in the concerts.”
Through her work, Sanna reflects on what it means to be a Slayer fan and the experience of fandom more generally. To move through a world that may not reflect you but knowing you have found a family that is always on the move. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is but it’s clear Slayer does it different.
Interview and text by Esta Maffrett | 27.10.21
How did you get into photography?
My dad was always taking pictures when I was a kid. He was really interested in photography and worked as a photographer in comedy clubs in Soho doing portraits, of people not of the comedians. I think the deal was you walked around and you'd sell people their portraits, I think it was kind of a common thing in clubs like that back in the 70s which is kind of nice. It's like when you're on a cruise ship or something, it's that sort of vibe. And so I guess photography was always around. We went to New York when I was 15 and we went to see a Diane Arbus exhibition which really blew me away. I really loved the way she would photograph the non-conventional people in society, sort of the oddballs, and I really liked her style of portraiture as well. It seemed like something possible, like something I could do. Before I went to Uni I saw a Nan Golding exhibition as well and that really left a big impression on me because she also focused on people outside of the norm of society. It was people that really interested me and she had developed a certain style that was kind of a snapshot style sheet. It wasn't as formal as Diane Arbus, it was a lot more candid. I guess then that was when I started exploring and getting interested in fashion photography and Corrine Day. I guess that's how I got into it really just seeing good photography.
What was your first Slayer experience and how did it transform you into a fan?
So I ended up going to University of Brighton to study photography and ended up not photographing people really. I did do one project with this trans woman who worked in the sex industry and she very kindly let me into her home to do some portraits and but that was like my only time venturing into photographing people. Most of my other pictures were really sterile urban landscapes and architecture and stuff like that, I think I was quite led by my tutors and sort of scared to try and do anything different. When I moved back to London I fell into doing big photography because I saw a band called Parkinson's and just thought they were great live. They were a Camden based punk band from Portugal. One guy Chris actually is in the archive, he was the drummer of the Parkinson's. Chris Lowe, he's got pictures in the museum's archive. So that band kind of got me into doing gig photography and then I ended up with a job at NME. They sent me to Download Festival and Slayer was one of the bands I had to photograph on the list and I was listening to punk stuff but hadn't really gone down the extreme metal route and you know I did like metal but I was just slowly getting into it. They moved Slayer from outdoors to a tent and it was baking hot, just as I was going up to the tent I saw all these kids running really fast to try and get a good spot and it just had this energy that I had not really experienced before. I just ended up turning my camera around to photograph the front row and then afterwards I took a few portraits of people as they were leaving the tent, I only took about six or seven but when I got them back I thought maybe there's something in this. The portraits had the energy that I'd experienced inside the gig but in a sort of still one to one way. They had this slightly wild-eyed look about them and I just thought maybe this is a good way to capture people and a good way to begin a project, a portrait project. It just sort of went from there, somehow me and my friend Sophie managed to get on this Slayer tour. It was a lot of work, we had to speak to the manager in LA and talk a lot with his lawyer which I think he just did to scare us really and make sure we didn't make any money out of it. He gave us Access All Areas passes for the UK tour so I just put it all on my credit card and rented a car and followed the tour around. I didn't actually meet them but just photographed fans along the way. You have to jump on these ideas. I remember my dad going ‘What? Why do you want to do that?’ Then, when I was doing it and afterwards, he was like, ‘Oh, this is great'. Sometimes people don't necessarily believe in the idea but if you have a feeling inside that there’s something there then you have to trust it.
How does the Slayer community differ from any other fandom communities you have experienced? Is it something that you can only show through your photos?
I think some of it is hard to even show through photos because it's mainly through talking to people It's like with any sort of extreme fan of music you know all the words, you really study the lyrics, you know the history, you know the year each album came out and who played on that album. The amount of information that people really know about Slayer because they want to and because they love that band. One thing that I've found with Slayer fans is that it's just a really diehard community. People don't seem to fall out of love with Slayer. Like even though they've had changes in the lineup, and maybe the music's less extreme and a bit more mainstream. People really love where they came from. Because when they were kids in California the scene then was so different to any metal scene anywhere in the world. And I think if you're from a different country, you kind of look at that scene and sort of love that it existed and wish you were there. So I think by loving Slayer you become a part of it. It's really pretty obsessive and it's like if one Slayer fan meets another, there's just this complete mutual respect. They paved the way for a lot of extreme metal like they were one of the first bands. Jeff Halloran passed away and other members have left but the people they've got in to replace them were friends initially and also there at the start so it creates a family. And so the fans themselves feel like they're part of that family. Fans love to talk about the first time they saw Slayer, it’s great. Because it really, really blew them away, it blew me away. Never seen anything like it.
"I've just tried one thing to show the beauty in a situation that might not necessarily be perceived as a beautiful serene moment. I saw a lot of that in the concerts."
How important is appearance in the way that the community moves together?
If someone is wearing a slayer shirt, someone else is wearing a slayer pin, or they've got a patch on their vest or whatever, then you're kind of like ‘okay, that guy's cool. She listens to Slayer’. Like people that drive Beatles, those cars, always beep at each other in the street. It feels like that. Now the veterans and old school fans can make their own Slayer merch. There's a group I met in California who would make their own t-shirts. They had their own name and they made patches and t-shirts and pins and just everything, so you can be a part of that Slayer fan family which was a mixture of ages. I guess it's pretty standard that people who are into extreme metal do tend to wear black t-shirts, have a denim vest, probably a leather jacket. It's kind of how you recognize that someone is into the same kind of thing as you, like having a bit of denim and leather on and even if they're not necessarily into Slayer it's kind of like alright well you like extreme music or you just don't want to dress in a way that the high street dictates you should. Although saying that I don't know if you could find Slayer t-shirts in Topshop for a while but I have a feeling you could. I guess if you come from a small town where everyone dresses the same and you're there with your battle vest on feeling confident that there's a community out there who are into the same stuff as you, even if they might not be around you, it gives you a sense of security and confidence that you need when you're different.
Do you think about how you are presenting Slayer fans to an outsider audience and those who don’t follow a fandom might perceive your work?
Definitely, because I don't want to portray people in a way that they wouldn't want to be portrayed. I don't want to betray the people that I've photographed. But then I also want people who aren't in the community to see that there is a softness. I think as an artist or a photographer we're always looking for the beauty in places and I just saw a lot in going to these shows. I think part of that is the raw emotion and I wanted to show some of that raw emotion through a softer side of the community. I think most important to me was to try and give an honest representation, as honest as I could of the people that I was taking pictures of. Then alongside that was to put across the beauty. I've just tried one thing to show the beauty in a situation that might not necessarily be perceived as a beautiful serene moment. I saw a lot of that in the concerts. I think with photography once you start taking a lot of pictures you see more. I notice when I go through periods of not taking many pictures I stop seeing in a photographic way. During that period, going to all these concerts, my senses were really high and I found these serene moments amongst all the chaos. And I think that is what can be appealing to people outside of the community.
You’ve worked with the Museum of Youth Culture in the past as the Education Lead. Can you talk about your role and some of the projects you worked on with us?
That was so much fun. It was just as the museum was starting up and I was working at a photography technician school in Tower Hamlets. Because the Museum knew my work they gave me a really great opportunity to come in and start thinking about and developing workshops with a few of the Museum partner organisations. I done some outreach, trying to find other people to get involved. We worked with young people from the Complete Works school who are a really interesting organisation. We found that often working outside of the UK curriculum was a bit easier. Going into regular secondary schools, because they tend to have a very fixed structure and time schedule, it can be quite hard to plonk a project into their timetable, it would leave the kids disturbed and out of their general routine. The Complete Works schools are really exciting schools to work with because they help a lot of children and young people who've had trouble in the comprehensive system, or they might suffer from really bad anxiety or just getting thrown out of class all the time. We just did some nice collage projects with them, some stuff where they were doing black and white printing. I think we gave them some black and white disposable cameras and had them take pictures with those. And then they could come into the darkroom in the office and have help printing off a contact sheet. We got some really interesting work out of that. It's always good to get kids outside out of school and into an exciting working environment because the archive you have isn’t your normal office.
If you could put one object into the Museum Of Youth Culture what would it be and why?
You guys have this of mine anyway. It would be my battle vest. The nice thing as well is that the denim jacket that I used was my dad's in the 70s. So it's gone down in family history.
In the top right corner is Sanna wearing her dad's denim jacket for a class photo in 1995 before it was cut up and covered in patches.
