Still mining my k of shots from The End of the Road Festival but I have no idea whose these belong to. Could it be Loney Dear? Motel Motel? Vetiver? I really need to go back and work out the sequence of shot to place it.
This falls under my funny little fetish for shooting the ‘ephemera’ of stage performance, especially all the detritus that litters the floor around a performer – water bottles, can of Red Stripe, wires, guitar pedals, setlists. In Josh Weller’s case, I seem to recall taking photographs of assorted fruit.
I love how an isolated body shot can show a whole new aspect of performance; reveal an element of performer identity.
I guess I’m also remembering that as I grew up, I became acutely aware of how shoes really do maketh the man. Watching kids older than me, learning the music they were into and noting the careful attention to footwear: Adam Cocoran, the Morrissey fan in the year above at college who wore a beautiful pair of leather winkle pickers; the guy who worked in the second hand vinyl place at the top of the hight street with his dirty converse sneakers peeking out from under stonewashed denim jeans. Footwear always at two extremes – the most simple, cheapest, shittiest low grade trainers or hand crafted, leather-soled and buffed up to a shine.
That’s why shoes are so important. They make a statement that says, “I am too cool to give a shit” or “I am so cool and I give a shit”. The space between is what disappoints: where there has been a half-hearted effort and the result is some shiny Nikes or something. That why I don’t take pictures of the feet of rappers. I like the dirt.
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