{"id":145451,"date":"2021-02-02T19:06:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T19:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/?p=145451"},"modified":"2021-02-02T23:34:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T23:34:37","slug":"kevin-cummins-what-it-was-like-to-shoot-punk-joy-division-oasis-blur-and-much-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/technique\/interviews\/kevin-cummins-what-it-was-like-to-shoot-punk-joy-division-oasis-blur-and-much-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Cummins: shooting punk, Joy Division, Oasis, Blur and many more"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

Kevin Cummins<\/strong><\/em>
\nKevin Cummins was born in Manchester in 1953. He spent ten years as the chief photographer for NME, he has contributed to publications wordwide and he remains one of the UK\u2019s foremost music and portrait photographers. See his website<\/a> for more<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s little surprise that Kevin Cummins ended up as a photographer as he received a camera for his fifth birthday present and both his father and maternal grandfather had home darkrooms. After developing his own darkroom skills at a young age he studied graphic design and photography in Salford, \u2018much to my parents\u2019 annoyance\u2026 they never thought it was a real job\u2019.<\/p>\n

He regularly viewed the reportage photography in the Sunday supplements but admits, \u2018I was more interested in portraiture. The three photographers whose work I really liked were August Sander, Bill Brandt and Diane Arbus. That taught me a lot about connecting with people, how to photograph them. Arbus had only just killed herself when I started my first year [at college], but that idea that you didn\u2019t just turn up and take a picture, you could spend days with somebody to craft a picture, stayed with me.\u2019<\/p>\n

Cummins graduated when the punk rock era was exploding. \u2018I started shooting that because, obviously, you don\u2019t walk out straight into a job. I went back [to college] for a year teaching and I also did two days a week printing in a darkroom for some industrial photographers, so I had access to darkroom and camera equipment. I was able to get out and shoot bands and I quickly got a piece published in the NME, about Manchester music, in July 1977.\u2019<\/p>\n

The hard yards<\/strong>
\nThe life of a rock and roll photographer may appear to be glamorous but it is anything but. Cummins explains, \u2018When I did a live show for the NME you\u2019d go to the gig and stay sober because the darkroom was about ten miles outside Manchester. I\u2019d drive there after the gig, process it, print it, contact sheet it, pick the best four shots and wait for those to dry. I\u2019d get back into Manchester about six in the morning and put it on Red Star Parcels, the only way of getting pictures down to London at the time.<\/p>\n

Then, if the NME remembered I\u2019d shot it, they\u2019d go and pick it up\u2026 you might get one picture in the following week\u2019s paper and you\u2019d get \u00a36.50 for it for 14 hours of work.\u2019 The Manchester music scene of the late 1970s was vibrant with bands like the Buzzcocks, The Fall and Joy Division building up followings.<\/p>\n

Cummins reveals, \u2018I\u2019d do regular work for the NME, plus I could do stuff for the other music papers. I lived in Manchester and I just shot everybody. [Journalist] Paul Morley and I were commissioned to do a piece about Manchester music, so we did three or four bands. There was a band called Spherical Objects and the singer was Steve Solamar, who was an interesting bloke. He was the fulcrum of the piece until we sat down with Joy Division, talked to them properly and realised they had a better plan and were hungry.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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Joy Division, Epping Walk Bridge, Hulme, Manchester, 1979<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

He shot his iconic picture of Joy Division on the Epping Walk Bridge in Hulme, Manchester, in 1979, the year before the band\u2019s lead singer Ian Curtis took his life. He adds, \u2018Now there\u2019s this huge mystique around Joy Division and they\u2019re bigger than they\u2019ve ever been, but at the time they were a peripheral band. They were the kind of band the music press gets excited about because they did a great first album. They were exciting but, at the time, the Buzzcocks and The Fall were probably bigger than them.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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The Smiths, Manchester<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Moving to London<\/strong>
\nIn 1987 Cummins moved to London as he felt he\u2019d done all he could in Manchester, though he made sure he had work lined up when he made the move. He laughs, \u2018I threw my lot in with NME and didn\u2019t do anything for other music papers. Pretty much just as I moved down all the stuff in Manchester with Acid House, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays exploded, so I was spending about three days a week coming back to Manchester having moved down to London\u2026 great timing!\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite having now lived in London for over 30 years he often goes back to Manchester, especially to watch his beloved Manchester City playing football. He admits, \u2018I\u2019ve pretty much painted myself into a corner by concentrating on Manchester stuff which, in a way, is why the Britpop book is quite nice, even though there\u2019s Oasis running through it. It just shows I\u2019m allowed to leave the city occasionally!\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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Liam Gallagher, Oasis, NME feature, outside Manchester City\u2019s old ground, Maine Road, July 1994<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Britpop brought to book<\/strong>
\nHis new book, While We Were Getting High: Britpop and the \u201990s<\/em>, features over 200 images shot throughout the 1990s when British bands like Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Suede were dominating the charts and the tabloid headlines. Despite the vibrancy of the imagery in it Cummins wasn\u2019t 100% sold on the idea: \u2018I wasn\u2019t completely convinced by it because I think it\u2019s quite hard to sell a book on a genre of music. Generally, with music books, it\u2019s much easier if you stick to a single band.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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The Charlatans, Brighton, January 1994<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

He sourced his archives from Getty and ended up looking through over 50,000 photographs for the book. He explains, \u2018When you do a shoot for a music paper it\u2019s quick. You\u2019d have to choose the best half dozen pictures, print those, put them in the file, they\u2019d be used the following week and then everything just gets filed. I managed to get quite a lot of stuff that hadn\u2019t been published before in [the book] but there\u2019s no point in putting 300 pictures nobody has ever seen because they want the picture of Noel and Liam in [Manchester] City shirts and they want the picture of Blur dressed as Blondie, so you\u2019ve got to do that.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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Blur as Blondie, NME shoot, studio, December 1991<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Although he is happy with how the Britpop book has turned out \u2013 it also includes interviews with musicians Martin Rossiter (Gene), Noel Gallagher (Oasis) and Sonya Aurora Madan (Echobelly) \u2013 Cummins was careful with its contents. \u2018It\u2019s quite a difficult thing putting a book out celebrating Britishness in this fairly toxic period we\u2019re living through, which is why I was careful not to overdo the Cool Britannia thing. I didn\u2019t want flag waving all over the book. There\u2019s only one flag in the book and that\u2019s a black and white of [Blur\u2019s] Damon [Albarn] in Tokyo.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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Radiohead, Gloucester, August 1994<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Changing times<\/strong>
\nCummins has spanned the analogue to digital eras but he retains some of his basic principles. \u2018I try to shoot digitally like I\u2019d shoot with film. I think every 36 frames is costing me 20 quid. What has changed enormously from analogue to digital is the sense of camaraderie with other photographers. After a session we were all used to going to Joe\u2019s Basement, or one of the other labs in Soho, and going to the pub next door while your film was being clip tested… moaning about your editor or something. Now we do a shoot and go home\u2026 it\u2019s become a very isolated profession in a way. You meet the person you\u2019re photographing \u2013 that\u2019s it, end of story. Then you go home and then you do all the work, rather than the lab, and you get paid less for it.\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t

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arvis Cocker, north London, December 1998<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Cummins had always shot with Nikon film cameras but with digital he changed brands. \u2018Canon was much further ahead than Nikon at the time. All of a sudden I had to learn to use a different camera and, just like when you use a new batch of film, you\u2019re likely to make the odd mistake. I think you learn by those mistakes. A couple of friends had used Photoshop and they showed me the basics of how to use it, so that\u2019s what I did and that\u2019s all I do. I\u2019ve got a Canon scanner, Canon cameras and lenses and whatever Photoshop is called these days.\u2019<\/p>\n

He continues, \u2018The camera body doesn\u2019t necessarily matter to me, just that it\u2019s not going to fall apart, but I will always buy the best possible lens. I\u2019ve got a Canon 16-35mm, a Canon 85mm f\/1.2, which is a really lovely lens, an 85-200mm and, obviously, a 50mm. My 50mm is a close-up lens as well so you can take a picture of someone\u2019s knuckle or a ring on their finger. So that\u2019s all I need. I\u2019ve got a 1.5x converter that I sometimes stick on the 200mm.\u2019<\/p>\n

Cummins does prefer to have a viewfinder through which he can view 100% of what he\u2019s taking. \u2018If I had a Nikon FM, say, I was getting 95% of what I was seeing in the viewfinder so when I\u2019d process it I\u2019ve got more on the film than I wanted which was really irritating. As soon as I could afford it, I bought Nikon F3s, which were as close as you could get to that edge-to-edge experience.\u2019<\/p>\n

Portrait influences<\/strong>
\nFor someone who has spent over 40 years photographing musicians Cummins has a surprising confession. \u2018I never liked music photography much. Obviously I\u2019m interested in it because that\u2019s the genre I\u2019ve worked in but I find a lot of it too confrontational. When you look at a couple of my pictures of Liam Gallagher they\u2019re quite sensitive, but people don\u2019t want sensitive portraits of Liam \u2013 they want him spraying beer into your camera lens and I\u2019ve never been the sort to do that kind of thing.\u2019<\/p>\n

He adds, \u2018I\u2019m much more interested in getting a soulful portrait of somebody. That\u2019s why I\u2019m more interested in portrait photographers and what they can offer \u2013 massively undervalued people like Jane Bown. Jane\u2019s pictures were an enormous influence on me and even [Lord] Snowdon was. Snowdon was a massively underrated photographer and I learnt quite a bit from reading about him and looking at the way he worked.\u2019<\/p>\n

Cummins regularly shoots commercial work for an Adidas capsule leisurewear brand and admits he is \u2018lucky\u2019 that at this stage in his career he can pick what he works on. During 2021 he is planning a new take on his Joy Division book Juvenes. \u2018It\u2019s an extended version of a limited edition I published about 14 years ago. There were only 226 copies\u2026 half the people who bought it didn\u2019t even unwrap it, so now I\u2019m giving them the opportunity to see what\u2019s in it. I keep saying to people who\u2019ve got Juvenes and still haven\u2019t opened it, \u201cI might as well just put a blank book in there.\u201d People would never know and by the time you did know it\u2019d be too late, I\u2019d be somewhere else!\u2019<\/p>\n

Kevin Cummins\u2019s<\/span> top tips <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n