New Romantics
A limited-edition photo book capturing the original Blitz Club creatives photographed in 1980 before the New Romantic movement went mainstream. Featuring never-before -seen portraits of Vivienne Westwood, Billy Idol, Princess Julia, Boy George, Stephan Jones and more.
Self published by Iain McKell under Little Acorn Press. A hand-crafted tribute to a revolutionary moment in style, sub culture and rebellion.
To purchase this book go to my SHOP section on this website.
The New Gypsies
Unrelated to the Roma, the new gypsies began in the early 1980s when a group of Post-Punk Anti-Thatcher protestors headed out of London into the English countryside. McKell followed these New Age Travellers to the West Country and over the years watched them become a hybrid tribe - the new gypsies - present-day rural anarchists, living in elaborately decorated horse-drawn caravans. Know as ‘Horsedrawn’, the new gypsies share a desire for sustainability, a love of self-reliance and a disdain for the trappings of contemporary life. For more than a decade McKell has focused his lens on travellers of all ages: parents, children, couples and loners. With sensitivity and honesty he captures a way of life that seems at once romantic, strange, beautiful and simple. The result is a deeply insightful portrayal of a culture that eschews the traditional creature comforts of urban life in favour of the simplicity and freedom of the natural world.
Private Reality: Diary of a Teenage Boy
In 1976, aged nineteen and studying at exeter College of Art, I got a summer job on the seafront in Weymouth photographing holidaymakers - it was a wonderful opportunity to earn a living and do a personal project.
It’s about youth culture and being a teenager in the 1970s. Existential angst was preoccupying my thoughts. It all came together through the lens as I was turning from teenager into young adult.
As well as holidaymakers I was photographing friends, family and local people from the town, and in the evening the discobars, fairgrounds and the caravan pars.
I was also experimenting with abstraction through the graphic nature of photography.
It was my rite of passage, a coming of age, as I started to look at the world through the camera.
Beautiful Britain
The photographs in the book come from a number of projects and were taken over the first 35 years of his career, from 1977 to 2011. The extended series have been edited into a collection that reflects his background growing up and working in Britain. They document the people, events and movements that have shaped him as a photographer.
Fashion Forever
30 years of subculture. Welcome to the world of street-style, as seen and documented by photographer Iain McKell. From the fledgling protests of punk to the extravagant New Romantics, from the fierce minimalism of skinhead to baroque flourishes of rockabilly, this is a real fashion, no mere catwalk dictate. This is how people live.
Fashion Forever is a unique account of the aesthetic choices of British youth and a comprehensive guide to three decades of style-driven subcultures. This book also presents a unique collection of portraits of distinctive individuals, their looks, their styles and their very personal statements.
Being in the thick of it for three decades, Iain McKell has an eye trained for detail and acute sense of occasion and an appreciation of the absurd. As contemporary scenes mingle and mutate, at an increasingly fevered rate, Iain’s camera is forever busy.
New Girl Order
When Iain McKell met a group of young female artists living in Tottenham, North London, he was struck by their ‘sparkly personalities’ and quirky dress sense.
It was spring 2016 and Iain had recently moved from West to East London. On and off for two years, he spent time at the girls’ warehouse, documenting parties and everyday comings and goings, but also free festivals, pop-up events and art performances with which the girls were involved. Gradually, candid shots of spontaneous moments became a much deeper, collaborative body of work about a group of young adults - a sisterhood - exploring their identities, both individually and collectively.