The magazine of the photo-essay
March 2019 back issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
In 1976 aged nineteen while studying at Exeter College of Art I got my self a summer
job on Weymouth seafront photographing holiday makers. I saw this as a wonderful
opportunity to earn a living but at the same time doing a personal project showing
the life of the sea side photographer. I’m now turning these photographs into a
beautifully made hard back book. This will be in partnership with the excellent
publishers Dewi Lewis. Its about youth culture and being a teenager in the 70’s.
Existential angst was preoccupying my thoughts. It all came together through the
lens as I was turning from a teenager into a young adult. As well as the holiday
makers I was photographing local people from the town, my friends, family and into
the evening with the disco bars fair grounds and caravan parks. I was also
experimenting with abstraction through the graphic nature of photography. I have
been selected to show this work at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate
which opens in May 2019 Its curated by Val Williams and Karen Seperdson A quote
by Iain McKell
Iain McKell’s book is being published by Dewi Lewis Publishing using Kickstarter.
The Kickstarter will be launched on 8th February 2019.
To back Iain’s Kickstarter follow the link!
from Val Williams “The early black and white photographs express both desire and despair the sense of un-belonging
visceral but ironically he did belong to this place. Growing up in a British sea side hotel in a landscape of arrivals and
departures of transient relationships founded on elusive notions of pleasure and escape” It was my right of passage and
coming of age as I started to look at the world through the camera.
