As a mainstay of Manchester's music's heyday, Kevin Cummins spent several years with Ian Curtis 2 and his bandmates.
Now, this photographer is synonymous with his greatest music exports, serving as the city’s unofficial archivist for more than 40 years, witnessing the rise of the Smiths, the Fallen Band, and the Joy Division in real time. Despite leaving the rainy enclave in 1987, he never really left. “I always keep the link,” he said with a smile. "I watched the Manchester City against Chelsea there last night.
Kevin wore a stone island coat, cleverly took off his badge and sat in the far corner of Paul Stolper Gallery in Bloomsbury. This is the opening ceremony of his new exhibition and the new book Archivum, a space filled with wealthy collectors and subculture enthusiasts, all of whom watched about 50 prints that, until recently, were dusted in Kodak boxes. Now, the series is hung on the wall with clear plastic wallets, forming the 1977-1984 Joy Division The patchwork history.
captures the band’s full journey, from their original works named after Warsaw, to the heyday of the Joy Division, and recently the new order, the images are classified by performance, rehearsal or conference. In one photo, we are welcomed into an ancient Manchester infestation, rafters, a pale-faced Ian Curtis delivers his voice sermon to the enthusiastic crowd of leather-wearing lads and brothel crawlers. Next, we find ourselves in the bleak, quasi-Soviet environment of Hulme, where the band poses on the snowy highway. Later, in photos taken after Ian’s death, we are in the paradise garage of New York , the absence of the late lead singer is both obvious and sad.
This image is a visual record of his entry into professional photography. Today, Kevin has a wide range of collaborators such as Madonna and Ice Cube, who has gained institutional recognition in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery and Damian Hurst. However, these shots are his most instinctive.
"To be famous for the photos you took at art school and after graduation, with it a certain responsibility," Kevin said. "You feel that if you have more experience, you may be taking photos in a slightly different way." However, he corrected himself: Innocence is the key. He captured him learning to shoot a band in a photo of Joy Division, and the band learning to be photographed.
Carefully study the work and anecdotes appear. These photos accurately describe how he felt working for weekly newspapers such as NME at the time, and he was often sent to perform tasks. While the soft tone lenses disappear when printed, the sharp contrasting black and white images that Kevin likes will remain influential on the page. The unstable borders created in the dark room reveal the fledgling artist’s attempt to find an iconic framing style, while the late night developed on a meager budget tells the story of a young working-class man relentlessly eager to sanctify every shot in a half-roll of film. Kevin will squeeze out extra photos and leave them to himself.
The cost of driving round trips to perform and shipping photos from the north to smoke often makes Kevin pay out of his own pocket. But it's worth it. Of course, the weekly deadlines are tight and there is little time to think about the cultural resonance of his rock photography, but he trusts his intuition. “It’s still considered a teenager,” Kevin said. "It's almost like a point-cut job and then get a serious job. My parents always say, 'But when are you going to shoot something serious?'" Of course, Kevin would continue to appease them, shoot for Royal Opera House , as well as ballet and drama, but his real mission ended up winning.
opened up a place in British history rather than his goal as an immediate hope to create a strong portrait of the band he believed in. If his work could get into the bedroom wall of budding fans—he also often filmed the idolized David Bowie and was told by their manager Malcolm McLaren about the secret sex pistol show—he would be happy. He firmly frees himself from the slutty of the show, keeping himself awake whether he is one of the bettors of the Leeds University show or the low-key dirtyness of record company owner TJ Davidson's rehearsal room. As a channel between Joy Division and the world, he advocated for their brilliance before and after the popularity of the crowd, only slightly aware that he was moving in a circle of mavericks, including graphic designers Peter Saville and Ben Kelly, and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson.
"I always want them to look very mindful, serious and intimidating," he said of his framework for Joy Division. "The reality of a lot of these photos is that other members of the band sat behind me trying to make Ian laugh, and I couldn't take pictures of him laughing. Kevin never took his exclusive intimacy with the boys for granted, reflecting on his key role in how to look at them more broadly, a responsibility that has been further emphasized in the small number of shots of Ian and his friends in the pre-digital era. He admits that some people still have a slightly skewed understanding of the lead singer. After all, given his epilepsy pain, Modlin's lyrics and thoroughly documented divorce, it's a A picture of an easy, if not lazy.
In Kevin's case, it's important to portray Ian in graceful and meticulous way, somewhere between a rock star and a meditative Manchester. "If I had a digital camera there, there would be pictures of him doing all kinds of horrible things, acting like a normal lad of his age, but that's not what I want," he laughed. He had his own perspective: "No one wanted a picture of someone peeing in an ashtray. They want someone who is eye-catching and beautiful.
Kevin's efforts paid off. Manchester attracted him with its friendly, localized uniqueness and rich squats, now internationally recognized and increasingly gentrified. What he saw in illegally occupied parliamentary property, unwise authorities and infamously bad weather continued to live without rent in the minds of cultural magpies around the world. “I had an exhibition in Buenos Aires and people walked over and said, ‘We love Manchester music’,” he recalls. "I said, 'But everything is different.
In his eyes, Manchester became Manchester because of its people, because of their pride in their hometown. The culture of post-industrial cities has never declined. Post-punk leads the loose scenes, manors and stone roses, Britpop is followed by Oasis - The latter bands are all perennial names in Kevin's catalog.
Kevin carefully fell into nostalgia, understanding his work as a form of reportage and contextualization. Indeed, Joy Division is a heavy subject. Just as it continues to inform today's cultural pioneers—such as Raf Simons, Mark Leckey and Supreme—it is also destroyed by a painful depression story that ultimately leads to the death of the lead singer. According to Kevin, it's about legacy, not nostalgia. "I still see the band, I still see Ian's widow and daughter," he said. "I won't be angry anymore when I look at [photos]. I feel very comfortable with them. I hope people like it.
