ARTS
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THIS BOYS’ LIFE Life at Blundell’s boarding school in the mid-1980s is the subject of a fascinating new book by local photographer ANDREW NADOLSKI
I
was just about to turn 22 when I arrived at Blundell’s School in 1986 armed with my camera. I was in my final year of a degree course at Exeter College of Art (now part of Plymouth University). I wanted to produce a major project of life in an institution and, after some discussion with my lecturers, the idea of photographing in a public school came up. This would be an alien world to me, as until my arrival at relatively ‘posh’ Exeter I hadn’t mixed with anyone who had been privately educated − I was the product of the secondary modern comprehensive system. An earlier graduate from Exeter, Steve Goodwin, had recently got a job as an art teacher at Blundell’s in Tiverton and through Steve an enquiry was made – would the headmaster John Rees allow a student to come and photograph in his school? John agreed to see me and I arrived at the school with my portfolio. I assured him that I had no agenda and, amazingly, he said I could have full access to the school, I could photograph anything and anybody I came across as long as they didn’t object. He said there was nothing in Blundell’s that he was embarrassed about. I wasn’t sure what I would find at the school and was surprised at how quickly my presence was accepted and I just became part of the dayto-day life. Teachers and pupils would come up to me and make suggestions of what might be worth photographing: the boys queuing up for their BCG injections; or, “You must photograph this boy’s room” – a gothic punk extravaganza complete with stuffed leopard’s head. Given my background, what I was most gratified to see was the respect the pupils had for the support staff, especially the ladies serving lunch − there seemed no class divide. I soon came to realise that both the school’s and the town’s prosperity were interwoven and Blundell’s was a major employer in the area. I would work my way around the school, one minute photographing the carpenter, the next braving the clouds of cigarette smoke that seemed 54 I EXETER LIVING I www.mediaclash.co.uk
to fill the Masters’ Common Room. The freedom the boys were given seemed a kind of semi-organised chaos, and they decorated their rooms with a glorious selection of magazine cuttings and posters – many of which seemed to feature Page 3 girl Samantha Fox, or the ‘infamous’ Athena tennis girl – as well as a selection of beer mats, traffic cones and the aforementioned leopard’s head. Because I didn’t know what to expect, everything fascinated me, from the ‘boot room’ where countless pairs of rugby boots were piled on top of each other, to an umbrella left to dry in a row of baths, one of which had a half-used bar of Imperial Leather soap near the taps. John Rees liked what I had produced and commissioned me to return in the autumn after I’d graduated, to take a few additional photographs so the school could produce a new prospectus. Thus began my 30 year-long association, with Blundell’s becoming my first client. Over these 30 years of photographing at Blundell’s, I have seen fundamental changes to how it runs; the biggest being the decision to go fully co-educational in 1992, which altered the dynamics of every aspect of school life. The teaching staff are now younger and the gender mix is balanced, the Common Room no longer dominated by elderly male Oxbridge graduates, and in 2013 the School appointed its first female head, Nicola Huggett. The biggest material change and the biggest contrast between the pictures from 30 years ago and the present is probably the boarding houses, where the relative comforts expected by parents today make the older facilities seem positively Dickensian. Over the years, Blundell’s has adapted and modernised and the contrasts between ‘then’ and ‘now’ are quite marked in many ways, reflecting the broader societal changes in the wider world. Boarding School: Blundell’s 1986 by Andrew Nadolski (Headon House) is out now; nadolski.com; blundells.org
Opposite, clockwise from top left: Boy outside the Tuck Shop; Boy with posters; Masters’ Common Room; Smoking in the toilets; Boy laughing in study room; Boy rehearsing his lines for the school play while having a bath
THE CONTRASTS
BETWEEN ‘THEN’ AND ‘NOW’ ARE MARKED IN MANY WAYS