PAUL HARTNETT: RAW STREET-STYLE TREASURE

PAUL HARTNETT RAW STREET-STYLE TREASURE

The Hartnett Vintage Collection is a rare street-style treasure.

“Over the years, I’ve dug up images of youth tribes that have a distant whiff of Lancashire’s Scuttlers and Birmingham’s Peaky Blinders – any visuals I can lay my hands on that have a feel of raw and real style.”

Unlike street-style site pimps such as Face Hunter, The Sartorialist and Jak & Jill, Hartnett has been documenting the extremes of street and club culture on an international basis since his first club snap back in 1976, long before the age of Fashion Week pops of colour and digi-selfies.

Beyond almost four decades of his own personal photographic work, beyond his massive contemporary collection of the best street and club photography (Caroline Coon, Ray Stevenson, Janette Beckman, Derek Ridgers…) is a vintage collection dating back to the dawn of photography.

Long before the Internet-based wave of photographers there was an eighteen-year-old Irish lad with a Nikon and roving eye. “As a child, I was raised in my parent’s old people’s home in Ealing, West London. Heywood House was a business both owned and managed by my resourceful mother, a home for two dozen ladies and gents. Each room was a different world. Each individual had one thing in common, they all came to their final stop with a photo album amongst their collection of prized possessions.

I loved those large, thick, heavy albums. Loved the various formats of photographic image, from elaborate studio backdrops to the various stamps of the photographer’s name and address both below an image and on the reverse side. I was always impressed by the delicate images, those which needed to be kept under glass in hinged cases, lined with worn-thin satin or velvet, and the often scratched and dented images produced on small strips of steel. That’s where the passion began.”

Educated by Benedictine monks at an all boys Catholic school that would make the tabloids for all the wrong reasons in later years, Hartnett first began taking photographs at the age of nine when he won “…a really nasty black plastic camera” as a bingo prize at a the British holiday resort of Clacton. His first subjects were weary donkeys on the beach and starfish trapped in shallow pools.

From punks and skinheads in the late 70s,  in the 80s to Ecstasy-driven ravers and total fashion victims in the 90s, this ultimate street photographer has documented midnight’s children and the world of the heavily addicted fashionista. His photographs have an appeal that extends beyond the marginal.

Armed with a Nikon he bought at a flea market, Hartnett began photographing fans of the Sex Pistols in Chelsea’s King’s Road and Portobello Market, then Steve Strange’s New Romantics in and around London’s Kensington Market and Covent Garden, linking with the likes of ‘gender benders’ Boy George and Marilyn, plus design icons such as John Galliano and Leigh Bowery.

Hartnett’s photography and writing have been published on an international basis. Since January 2014, his work has been on a monthly tour that ends in December 2015. Over the years, Hartnett has contributed to publications such as i-D, Dazed & Confused, The Sunday Times Magazine, V Man, China’s Vision and Fashion Trend Digest.

Hartnett has been involved with industry-based fashion forecasting major WGSN for prolonged periods in the past and regularly lectures upon Fashion Design, Fashion Journalism and Photography at a number of leading universities in the UK.

“The fashion world is all about change,” says Hartnett. “The fashion world is all about relentless enquiry, relentless need. Attend any of the Fashion Week events on a regular basis, disco till dawn at name-drop private parties, shop until you orgasm in front of a changing room mirror, and you’ll be able to distill the emotions of wanting, with a desperation to know how we’ll look next, where we are going next, how we will feel. With the vintage photographs that I collect, I feel a strong link to the past, from the manner in which subjects were posed, right down to the basic photographic techniques that those largely unknown photographers adopted, similar to my own approaches, avoiding complexity.”

Sometimes, I’ll compose an image with my vintage archive playing a part in the creation of a twenty-first century creative process.”

Street and club photographs are common currency now, with thousands of happy-snapper pictures being uploaded every week on to niche sites and the feeding frenzy of Flickr and Tumblr.

“What has always intrigued me,” comments Hartnett, “are the motivations to dress up, the resourcefulness and the often desperate need to be seen as an individual.”

Hartnett has always focused on individuals who work a strong ‘look’ subjects for whom transforming their appearance means a lot more than occasional bouts of ‘fancy dress’.

“Working within the restrictions of a street location, club venue or hysterical fashion event means I have to work fast,” he enthuses. “I like to be very minimal in my approach, stripped right down. No props, no setups, no team around me, nothing premeditated or animated.”

Words: Dzhokhar Zalac
Pictures: Paul Hartnett