Skins

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But alongside their shared musical references, the photographer does concede that the skins also “looked cool”. “It’s American 50s prep, really,” he explains. “Maybe not the boots, but the chinos, the tight trousers, the smart Levi’s and the Ben Sherman shirts. It’s very classic. It wasn’t made up by the skins, it came from Americana, really.” EJ: There’s an ease to those captured that only comes from being a photographer rooted in a scene, what was your relationship like with the people you photographed? Gavin Watson grew up in a typical working class overspill town that surround London. Stumbling into photography aged 14, becoming a skinhead at 15, he inadvertently documented the real social interracial music scene behind the media’s right-wing portrayal of a demonised youth culture. Undiscovered until the 1990s, his work became a blueprint for the work of filmmaker Shane Meadows, and significantly influences a generation of photographers working today. The growth of the right-wing National Front and its recruitment of youth merely increased the amount of conflict present in the skinhead subculture. Punk shows and Ska shows were marred by skinhead violence. Even American newspapers covered the race riots that exploded in London in 1981. GW: No I don’t, because there is no Top of the Pops – eight to 80-year-olds saw Boy George. When you went to school the next day, your mum was talking about him and your classmates were talking about him too. It was the same with Madness. Now you’ve got to go on YouTube and search for stuff. There is no uniform and they’re just shoving shit down our throats. It’s all about the music but we’ve got no congruence. It’s all got to die, they’ve taken over, and they market us stuff we don’t like and don’t want.

Skins - ACC Art Books UK Skins - ACC Art Books UK

Gavin Watson: 'This is Tottenham Chris, who featured in the first Skins book quite extensively. He worked at the Fred Perry factory and would steal us shirts, which was quite handy.' A decade later, when Shane Meadows made This is England, I was able to deal with what I’d created. He discovered my book and made a story out of it — it’s very close to the bone, like watching my life. During the early 1980s, political affiliations grew in significance and split the subculture, distancing the far right and left-wing strands, although many skinheads described themselves as apolitical. The skinhead subculture was born in England in the late 1960s as an offshoot of the mod culture. Skinheads were distinct from other British subcultures due to their uniform of boots, jeans, braces (suspenders), and the trademark shaved head.

Skinsby Gavin Watson is arguably the single most important record of ’70s skinhead culture in Britain. Rightly celebrated as a true classic of photobook publishing, the book is now reissued in a high-quality new edition under close supervision from the photographer. Their style was an exaggerated version of the traditional unskilled laborer. One of the first scholars to research skinheads, sociologist Mike Brake, classified skinheads as a “traditional working-class delinquent subculture” and documented five traits that defined first-generation British skinheads: toughness and violence; football (soccer), ethnocentrism, Puritan work ethic; and a cynical worldview. Skins by Gavin Watson has been argued as being ‘the single most important record’ of 1970s skinhead culture in Britain, who have possibly been one of the most reviled yet misunderstood of the nation’s youth subcultures.” — Daily Mail

GAVIN WATSON ARCHIVE ABOUT — GAVIN WATSON ARCHIVE

I didn’t want to be a rebel; I wanted to be normal. I was a shy, sensitive child that wanted to be an artist, but I just felt I didn’t have much of a choice in the environment I was growing up in, which was extremely violent. I didn’t want the pictures to show that. I never photographed any fighting or the grief that poverty brings. I didn’t want to photograph the abuse and the violence. It was part of my everyday life. Why would you expose your friends’ darkest secrets? Intimate, vibrant and full of character, his new book is a testament to the inclusiveness and diversity that skinhead culture was actually born of, demystifying the stereotypes that skins have struggled to shake off since. Though it wasn’t specifically his intention, the book naturally helps to counter the Neo-Nazi rhetoric it has come to be associated with, and he insists vehemently that real skinhead culture – the kind he experienced growing up – is a world away from the depiction fuelled by mainstream media. GW: I’ve only just started to own that, it’s taken me until nearly turning 60 to actually own that I did that. I spent most of my life making excuses and saying, “Oh anyone could have done it.” It’s only recently I’ve been able to own it, I’ve done the most incredible things to avoid what I’ve done. As mod split into two in the late-’60s – Small Faces-style psychedelia went one way, ‘harder’ lads the other – a look that combined Ivy League precision with Jamaican attitude and British workwear was born. This was skinhead. And the music that its adherents danced – or at least jumped about to – was ska. As a pro-working class movement, skinhead culture attracted those with nationalist beliefs, including violently racist or neo-Nazi elements.Early northern soul fashion included strong elements of classic Mod style, including button-down Ben Sherman shirts, blazers with centre vents and an unusual numbers of buttons, and brogue shoes. Later northern soul dancers began wearing lighter, loose fitting clothes for easier movement on the dance floor. This included high waisted baggy Oxford trousers and sports vests with leather-soled shoes. For Watson, the presence of skins in such communities defies the skewed perception of the subculture as a breeding ground for white nationalism. “It goes against the narrative so hard,” he explains. “It just goes to show that [being a] skinhead’s not about race, it’s about a working-classness, a comradery, and that is universal. That’s why, whenever there’s a strong working-class culture – regardless of religion – you’ll find people listening to ska music and you’ll find people dressed as skinheads.”