BigShinyThing

From the early London punk scene, through Leigh Bowery and the clubs kids, to street culture in Japan and the Asian mainland, Hartnett has been there to capture the look while it’s still fresh and raw. We were keen to ask a few questions of the man who’s seen it all.

BST: You’ve been documenting youth and street culture for over 30 years now. What is it about those worlds that keeps you excited?

PAUL HARTNETT: I started documenting street and club culture at the age of eighteen as a means of social lubrication. I wanted to get close to the key punk players such as Soo Catwoman and Sid Vicious, who lived in the next road to me in West London back then. I wanted to go beyond the visual. A camera seemed a perfect excuse to talk, exchange ideas, develop a rapport. Sometimes there’d be very little beyond the hair spray and eye-liner, sometimes there were all kinds of viewpoints, the most brilliant perspectives.

At the core of my work there is a continuing look at customising, how individuals have crafted a look. My pictures are portraits, executed with a Kodak Instamatic, a Polaroid camera and a range of Nikon stuff. I’m not a technical person. For me it has always been about faces, dimly lit, content driven, not style driven. Faces, colours, textiles, soul. The messed-up, the dressed-up. The fucked-up.

You’ve recently been exploring Chinese youth culture. What were the most interesting things they’re up to?

I recently visited Shanghai and Beijing for i-D magazine. I was involved with a street and club exhibition at Source’s Kong Gallery and this was a way in to meeting some creative souls. Visiting fashion schools such as IFA Paris and Raffles Design Institute was my focus, away from the gallery. There is such a rawness to Chinese fashion. It is often quite crude and quite different to the work Chinese students do at the likes of Central Saint Martin’s in London or FIT and Parsons in NYC. Having observed over 600 fashion students at work, having photographed a selected few, I gained insights. The Chinese are so very different to the Japanese. The work at Shinjuku’s Bunka, for example, is on another planet compared to what is happening in Shanghai and Beijing. Yep, it’s superior. That said, I was fascinated by the grounded approach of so many students at IFA Paris in particular. It’s a place to watch, they certainly have the technical skills.

You’ve covered the most important musical and style movements of the last 30 years. Which of those do you feel the most empathy with, and what’s going on at the moment that you are most excited by?

I saw The Sex Pistols perform many weeks before the Punk Festival of 1976. It was just electric, kind of like Brecht entering the stage. Before that I’d only seen Sparks, Bowie and Cockney Rebel perform live. I was in a band as a teenager, Missing Presumed Dead, so inspired by the DIY ethos of Punk and Power Pop. What I love about fashion and music is when people are totally fired up, and a bit ‘bonkers’ with it. Really exploding internally and doing something individual externally, going beyond a commercial formula, a safe established pattern.

Right now there’s a musician named NIYI who DJs at club nights such as Gauche Chic. As a producer, NIYI is unpredictable, he uses the most unexpected samples. He is very playful and could certainly be categorised under ‘bonkers’. He is my #1 muse right now — a joy to photograph, when he can be bothered to turn up.

You’ve run clubs as well as documenting those run by others: have you always been that involved in the scenes you cover photographically? Have you ever had issues with access — scenes or subcultures who you wanted to document, but who simply closed ranks and didn’t let you near them? How do you deal with that? Who or what scene have you not covered, but would most have wished to?

I ran a club named Kawaii in London back in 1983. It was very inspired by Japan’s club culture. I also ran the world’s first club for drag kings, women who dress as men, back in 1995. The majority were female to male transvestites, some were heavy-duty transexuals. Every Thursday night there’d be 150 toughies, and me. There was one simple rule: NO CAMERAS! This allowed me a somewhat strategic exclusivity.

I’ve never had issues re access. I’ve had good coverage over the last three decades, and I tend to be guest-listed without ever having met the promoters. Door whores just know who I am. Being fat and a few months short of fifty seems to be a plus nowadays. Verification for clubs abroad is easier than it was in the past due to my website, people can check out editorial content, photographic approach, fast as click-click-click. Some fetish clubs can be stand-offish, they live in fear of News International and local councils.

The only club I have ever experienced shit with is that shit club named Boom Box. Oh, what a Hoxton hole. Just so hyped, so over-rated, and so over. I took a few pics… then pressed the delete button and left. I have little patience for fashion sheep.

You seem both fascinated by style and its associated fantasy worlds, but your photos are raw and uncompromising
– you talk about showing the ‘reality of fashion’. What does that mean to you?

Take a look at street-style pics in magazines such as i-D and Dazed & Confused and you will often find credits for an entire team of mag slags; hair stylists, make-up performers… an entire circus. To me this ain’t street-style, it’s manipulation. What I have done for the last three decades is SNAP with seconds of seeing. No touching, no altering, no upgrading. SNAP. Same location, same same same reality. Sure, sometimes I’ll ask for a plastic bag to be put aside or an event bracelet to be concealed, that’s all. So many magazines provide clothes that their advertisers wish to be promoted. That sucks.

What’s the future of street and club photography as you see it? What’s the role for ‘photographers’ as such, when the ‘kids of today’ have MySpace and a bunch of club photo websites on which to show off their poses, and every phone is a camera?

The Internet has come along and fucked so many people sideways. The music industry is in a tizz, everybody
seems to be online so much of the time. Punk’s DIY ethos is everywhere. People pimp their profiles to a narcissistic extent on myspazz and facebore. There are street-style photographers such as Facecunter (I think that’s his name) who snap at fashion events, but in a really bad way. So cheesy and hap-hap-happy. All very Grazia or Closer, Heatish.

I think it’s great that so many people are taking photographs, even if it with with dinky telephone toys. I love that crap quality, that low-res fuzz. I love the diversity available. That said, I continue in my own way. I have CCTV eyes, and pay an almost forensic attention to detail. I like clarity and the portraiture I have amassed is for a future audience I have never met.

Paul’s work will be on display at the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane from 14 February 2008. Go see. Also check out the PaulHartnett.Com and PYMCA sites.

[Thanks to Adz!]

Another one bites the dust. Last night Patti Smith performed the last ever gig at CBGB featuring covers from NY City punk scene legends The Ramones and Blondie. Patti finished her set with Gloria. According to the BBC, a dispute over rent rises led owner Hilly Kristal to lose his lease, more than 30 years after the club opened.

Patti Smith said,

We can have CBGB in our hearts, but the new generation is going to have their own places to play. They’re going to find some shit hole and play in it like we did.

Photo source: NME.com.

Yellow Arrow is a long-running international media project which explores urban narrative through physical tagging of locations, text messaging and the Internet.

Not content with a nice brand, global reach, and thousands of participants, Yellow Arrow has recently launched Capitol of Punk, an ambitious, city-wide exhibition/media trail in Washington D.C., tracing the places and people of the city’s harcore punk scene. They are also very keen to work on a UK-based project: if any of you have opportunities or ideas, please get in touch!

YA’s Project Director, Jesse Shapins, kindly granted BigShinyThing this exclusive email interview.

BST: First of all can you tell us what the Yellow Arrow project is and how it works?

SHAPINS: Yellow Arrow is a new way of exploring cities. It began 2.5 years ago as a street art project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Since then, Yellow Arrow has grown to over 35 countries and 380 cities globally and become a way to experience and publish ideas and stories via text messaging on your mobile phone and interactive maps online. The project offers curated tours of specific cities and the ability to browse thousands of single points of interest submitted by people. We call this first dimension Yellow Arrow CityTXT Tours and the second The Yellow Arrow M.A.A.P. The “M.A.A.P.” acronym signifies that Yellow Arrow itself is a new map, and specifically means “Massively Authored Artistic Publication.”

The project is built around the general philosophy that every place is distinct and engaging if seen from a unique perspective. With this foundation, Yellow Arrow enables every place to become an attraction. Stories are always tied to unique details such as back-alley murals or unique street markers, as well as classic locations like the Empire State Building in New York or the Reichstag in Berlin. Overall, the aim is for Yellow Arrow to provide a frame and platform to see the world in a new way.

The first CityTXT Tour takes place in Washington D.C. as part of our recent Capitol of Punk project. To begin a CityTXT Tour you send the keyword for the location (e.g. Mall) to the number 67067 and then you begin receiving a series of messages that guides you through the streets. People publish to “The Yellow Arrow M.A.A.P.” by placing uniquely-coded stickers at locations of their choice and then sending a text message from their phone with the story they would like associated with that place. When someone else sees the sticker, they send the unique code and then receive the author’s original message back.

In more general terms, we see Yellow Arrow as evolving a true 21^st century publishing platform that merges conventional editorial publishing and user-generated content. The structure leverages the power of community publishing set forth by new media, while maintaining elements of a traditional publishing model to support cohesive curation and foster high-quality content.

How many MAAPers do you currently have and what is the traffic like? How many countries do you now cover?

There are MAAPmakers in 35 countries and 380 cities internationally. The largest communities are in Northern Europe and the United States, but arrows have been placed in Kenya, Mexico, Argentina, China, India, and Russia among others.

Is it completely self-supporting financially? You sell the stickers and merchandise, but does that pay for the SMS traffic etc?

Yellow Arrow is one of many initiatives we have. Counts Media has invested heavily in the project and the dedication has been to the integrity of the brand and content. On the other hand, The Yellow Arrow M.A.A.P. is streamlined so that expenses are very low.

Now that American Idol has made Americans engage with text messaging, have you seen an explosion in interest and are you planning to publicise the project more in the UK where text messaging has been popular for years?

It’s no coincidence that initial creators of the project all spent extensive time in Europe. That’s where we were introduced to text messaging. When we first started the project here in the US, what seemed very natural to us was definitely very new to even more advanced technology circles in the US.

Now, though, text messaging has definitely taken off here and we don’t have to explain really how it works anymore. We’ve been very excited about that. We’ve never considered this a technology project. It’s always been a cultural project, and the most unique technological aspect is the creative application within the overall philosophy of Yellow Arrow.

We already have a small MAAPmaker community, and like everywhere, would be very excited to see it grow and have more curiosities on the map from the UK. And we’d be thrilled to create a CityTXT Tour anywhere in Britain. Maybe some completely conventional tourist destination like Newcastle or something [smiles] But seriously. I love the cities of the UK and think there is a huge opportunity to create some great projects there with the right partners.

Do you think that accusations of creating (street)space junk and litter may hamper the project as it proliferates? Do you have a contingency plan if it does?

We’ve been asked this question now for over 2 years and to date there has never been a complaint or a problem. There is a clear culture established in the community that encourages stickers to be placed carefully either with permission or in places where stickers and street art already proliferate.

That said, the Capitol of Punk project is the first instance where you can experience Yellow Arrow without any existing physical marker in the landscape. You can download the PDF map online that has all of the location information and keywords for the tour starting points. This definitely points in a direction where Yellow Arrow is a completely digital experience.

Can you tell us a little bit about Counts Media and its relationship to the project/locative media in general?

Counts Media was founded by the well-known New York experimental theatre artist Michael Counts in 2005. The company grew out of the past work that Michael had done that placed audiences at the center of the experience and took them on a journey through space. Yellow Arrow was one of the first projects the company took on. We see the future as a convergence of information and entertainment across multiple channels, and we work to produce experiences that from the beginning are conceived with specific elements multiple media channels. So, it’s not about writing a book like the “Da Vinci Code” and then making the movie and the game. It’s about creating entertainment that spans different media from the start.

No media company today can deny the importance of “reality programming” due to the mass access to digital media production. From this perspective, our opinion is that place is a very interesting lens through which to engage reality. By approaching reality through place, you necessarily engage collective stories and history. And if place is a key subject, locative media are a natural means of making this content available and interactive.

Here in the UK everyone is getting very excited about the potential of mobile content (especially with regards to marketing) but very few people seem to have a grasp on an actual exciting and engaging deliverable. Counts Media seems to have an idea — can you illuminate?

In our mind, the future of mobile content is in many ways the same as the history of content to date. People are engaged by interesting stories — both fiction and non-fiction. Of course an SMS novel or an SMS documentary is different than a standard book or feature length film. The format is different, so things like the length and pacing have to adjust. And the potential for interactivity is much greater, so content should be designed from the beginning with the experience of the user in mind. But the same general principles of compelling stories and inspiring ideas apply.

It also seems to us that you are creating a new medium of urban stories — it could also be seen as a wiki. Are you concerned that it will be hi-jacked by crass commercial messages (i.e. ‘McDonald’s this way’) attempting to gain a bit of street cred or — like YouTube — do you have the attitude that it’s all content/helps you on the way to world domination. Is there a masterplan (that you can tell us about… )?

I’d say our approach incorporates both Wikipedia and YouTube. This is illustrated by the multiple dimensions of editorial publishing and user-generated content. We see the major value of Yellow Arrow as bringing together these two models, such that the philosophy, brand and community drive high-quality content. This is then supported by the technology, that both enables the delivery and submissions of content. There will surely be crass location-based marketing and it might use a system similar to Yellow Arrow. However, if we stay true to the values of providing a new way of exploring cities and a frame for seeing the world in a new way, I’m confident that the community and marketplace will respect and support that.

On that same point, do you think your brand strong enough to resist the incursion of commercial brands entering the same space?

We hope so. And our brand is commercial, in that we aim to make money to further our goal of enabling a new form of travel and publishing that enriches people’s relationship to the world around them.

Finally, can you tell us a bit about your current project and how it has been received in the Washington DC area?

This project is something we’re really excited about.

Both in the U.S. and internationally, Washington D.C. is known for the White House (and therefore home to good ‘ol Mr. Bush), for the hundreds of national monuments and thousands of politicians from all over. But Washington D.C. is also home to one of the seminal movements of American music: D.C. hardcore and punk. The music scene is deeply tied to the city and a powerful embodiment of creative localism. We thought it fit very well within the philosophy of Yellow Arrow to showcase this music scene that emerged in the late 70s there and still continues on today.

We asked musicians and others involved in the music scene to tell stories about places that meant something to them. For the past year, we’ve been collecting these stories and anecdotes to create short documentary videos and the text message tours.

The tours include quotations from D.C. luminaries such as Ian Mackaye, Ian Svenonius and Marion Barry. To take the tours, people download a PDF map on the site with the starting points and specific instructions.

People can also watch the 10 documentary videos that give insight into the stories of each location. The videos feature original music from the scene and extensive interviews with musicians. People can view the videos on the website or download them directly to an iPod as a video podcast in iTunes.

And people have asked “Why is D.C. the “Capitol of Punk” instead of “Capital of Punk”? Our choice was intentional. We do not proclaim that D.C. is the “capital,” in the sense of the global center of punk music. “Capital” implies power. The word “capitol” specifically refers to a building, and in particular in Washington, it refers to the “Capitol,” the place where the nation’s congress meets. In this sense, “Capitol of Punk” is a metaphor for the city of Washington as a place where the musical cultures of punk collide and grow. By extension, this is a provocation for thinking about the collision of ideas and values that takes place daily in the “Capitol” building. As with everything in D.C. and true to the democratic values of Yellow Arrow, politics are unavoidable in this project.