ANDREW MACLEAR

London, 1966 - and I was a teenager with a camera, newly arrived in London as the Swinging Sixties were exploding.  Employed as a messenger, I became intimately familiar with the labyrinth of alleys and cut throughs that composed Soho and the West End. This is where the action was focused.  Clubs, bars, models, shoe makers, hustlers, Italian coffee shops, emerging bands and their managers. London was characterized by a psychedelic diversity of activities, low rents, infinite possibilities and a cultural landscape which resonates half a century later.   And for a teenager with a Nikon, a reasonable eye and pocketful of Tri-X, the obvious thing to do was photograph it. Not with any particular objective. Objectives weren't high on the agenda in the swinging sixties. Just doing it would do. A picture did not have to be sold... it just had to be taken. Thus, images of after hours drinking clubs in Soho, run down housing projects and eccentric people in the street  stand alongside pictures of Jean Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Barbra Streisand and John Lennon. London was an open canvas and anyone could paint or play or record on it. "No" was not a word in the general vernacular. These pictures are not classic music pictures, nor is there much performance material. They are singular moments from an emblematic decade caught by an accidental photographer. The pictures are principally portraits, or "close work". The Revolution Night Club is faces and cigarettes. Barbra Streisand in the Dorchester Hotel is just Barbra Streisand in a chair.  Jimi Hendrix rehearsing in the Royal Albert Hall is Jimi Hendrix, hands and fretboard. These pictures are principally in black and white - an economic necessity in those days rather than a stylistic decision.  "Shoot six or ten frames and leave" was the maxim. Then head for the darkroom. Fifty years later, what do I feel about the pictures? The pictures were really just given to you by the subject. You put a frame around what or who was in front of you. You just had to know where that frame should be.         

Jimmy Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was rehearsing at the Royal Albert Hall, London, February 1969. I went along to the rehearsal and I think there were just a few photographers there. Either I stood on a chair or was on the front of the stage as the camera is very square onto his body. As usual, I only did a few images, some Ektachrome and the rest in black and white. And, as usual, the pictures are very close as I only had my 50mm or 85mm. I don´t think anything at all was said and he was obviously absorbed in his guitar and rehearsal. And anyway, a young upstart photographer doesn´t tell Jimi Hendrix what to do.    

Andrew Maclear