Derek Ridgers

Pietari, Torture Garden, London 2001, from DARK CARNIVAL - Portraits from the endless night, 1977-2001 (C) Derek Ridgers, 2001

Derek Ridgers trained as a graphic artist and went into advertising, where he worked as an Art Director for ten years. One of his clients was a camera company and he picked up the product and gave it a try. When he parted with the agency he decided to take up photography.

Among his first published work wer pictures taken on a second-hand Nikkormat, bought as a cheap camera to take to punk nights at the Hammersmith Palais. He pogo'd up and down with the best, taking pictures using a flash on a home-made bracket. Before long his pictures were attracting attention, and he had an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

These pictures come from the body of work, 'Dark Carnival - Portraits from the endless night', he has been building up for over 25 years on the club scene in London and around the world,, concentrating, as he says, on 'certain clubs and some excessive looking people. Some of the people I'm interested in, I will have photographed and got to know over a 10 year period'. His work shows various subcultures, fetishes, body piercing and other unusual forms of adornment and Ridgers hopes it will be published in book form. It is an aspect of London that most of us may feel unfamiliar with, but still a very much a part of the 'cities of people'.

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more - the photograpers
Paul Baldesare   Jim Barron   Chris Dorley-Brown   Peter Marshall  
Paul Mattsson     Derek Ridgers      Mike Seaborne      Paul Trevor

Cities of Walls,
      Cities of People

Other shows:

Housing & Homelessness
Cities in Watercolour
City Markets
The City Beautiful
City Journeys
Zen and the art of cities
Cities of Walls, Cities of People