How did someone with minimal photography experience find themselves photographing bands like Bloc Party, Razorlight and some of the biggest indie acts of the 00’s? Photographer Gregory Nolan joined Seán Rocks on Arena to tell him how he got his start in music photography. It’s all led to his exhibition, This was Our Scene: Images from the venue floors, stages and after-parties from London’s 00’s Indie music scene.
It was a fortuitous break, Nolan explained to Seán. He was living in London and “happened to bump into the right person (the musician Jay Sensible, who now goes by the moniker Beans on Toast). Jay was doing a pub night called “Sensible Sundays” and a friend of Nolan’s convinced Jay to give him the chance to put on an exhibition:
“At the time I was photographing pigeons and parks, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Managing to pull together an exhibition, Nolan says he “kind of blagged it” getting to know the artists who turned up. Seán questioned the level of technical expertise Nolan had at the time. Surely an exhibition meant he was on the right track:
“When I bought it [the camera] I literally saw the size of the lens and was like ‘oh, I’ll have that one’. No idea…I remember just going, ‘I’ll have that lens, it’s big’…I didn’t know what iso was, I didn’t know what an f-stop was…I’m a little better now”.
Nolan thinks the trick to gaining the access he did was down to a few variables. He was friendly, he didn’t put pressure on the bands for photos and, importantly, he believes the bands themselves didn’t see themselves as being part of a scene or a movement:
“No-one knew what was going on at the time. No-one knew it was a scene.”
Listen back to the full interview with Gregory Nolan on Arena here.