This is a story of transformation between youth and manhood.
A time when a young man must set sail on a voyage into the world.
To gain his feathers, become a brave, to adorn arrows in his quest for knowledge and respect.
This is the story of us, the council estate kids, the nameless thousands without a voice, where there are no rules, only experience to gain.
Scorned by many, understood by few, but as time goes by we will always be there.
Only the faces will change.
Symond Lawes
Who ’ef’n wants it?
Running up the flag
Gavin Watson was born in London in 1965 and grew up on a council estate in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. He bought a Hanimex camera from Woolworths in his early teens and began to take photographs. Upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, Watson moved back to London and became a darkroom assistant at Camera Press. He continued to photograph his younger brother Neville and their group of skinhead friends in High Wycombe.
The ‘Wycombe Skins’ were part of the working-class skinhead subculture brought together by a love of ska music and fashion. Although skinhead style had become associated with the right-wing extremism of political groups like the National Front in the 1970s, Watson’s photographs document a time and place where the subculture was more racially mixed and inclusive. The first edition of Skins (1994) was hailed as a modern classic by the critics, with the Observer Review stating “This book has become a cult itself”. Shane Meadows has cited Watson’s photographs as an inspiration for his film This is England (2006). Since 2012, Watson has been exhibiting his work in New York, London, Paris and Milan, where it has been described as “generation defining”. He is presently developing a clothing brand to be manufactured and distributed by a major London fashion house.
