Harley Young chats with the renowned music photographer ahead of her talk at Manchester Art Fair
Scarlet Page, daughter of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, grew up around musicians and after studying photography at the University of Westminster in the early ’90s, quickly developed her own fresh, documentary style of capturing some of the biggest stars of the day.
I caught up with Scarlet ahead of her talk at this year’s Manchester Art Fair to find out what you can expect.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’ve been a photographer for 30 years this year. I did a degree and assisted a music photographer then started doing it on my own, which led to me taking a plunge and going to a festival in the states, Lollapalooza, where I happened upon a new band called The Verve and got introduced to them.
I asked if I could take some photos on their bus. The photo that I took I sent out as a composite to all the managers and press officers that I knew and their manager came back to me really quickly saying “Oh, we’d love to use this on their album artwork”, which was very cool.
That sort of helped my portfolio get a little bit of credit and set me off on my journey, so that was a Manchester band that helped me on my way in the beginning.
How has live music photography changed over the past 30 years other than technologically?
In terms of being able to photograph a band, it’s changed because there’s some very strict contracts out there where bands want to own full copyright over everything that you shoot, which is going to be the death of photography.
It’s also getting quite monopolised by agencies like Getty and others. In the beginning I would ask and get a photo pass, if there was space, and be able to just take a chance and see what I got, which organically led to being able to supply fresh images. That just doesn’t really happen anymore.
I used to have some of the Paramore photographs you took for Kerrang! on my wall, actually - they’re fantastic.
That was their first shoot for Kerrang! and then later on I did their second. What was lovely was this summer, I took my 16-year-old daughter to see Taylor Swift on tour, who was supported by Paramore. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time when I first photographed them, so it was really lovely to be there with my daughter, seeing everyone knowing all the words to their songs, after photographing them back then.
What, in your opinion, makes a good photographer?
Passion, a good work ethic. You have to be a hard worker and always be wanting to learn new ways of being inspired - you know, not getting stuck in the box.
Are there any artists or bands that you had a really great time photographing?
Most shoots I get something really positive out of, even if it's just that sense of fulfilment of coming away with some great content. I spent a year on the road with The Darkness when they had just brought their ‘Permission to Land’ album out - that was a really fun, exciting time to be around them.
I remember Justin had just bought himself a lot of Hermes jewellery and sliders and a calfskin Prada suitcase, which, as I saw it being checked on [to the tour bus], I thought “That’s the end of that pristine white calfskin Prada suitcase. It’s forever going to be tarnished.” It just felt like “Wow, this is how they are living.”
They were always wanting to laugh at themselves and have a great time. They’re still just as much fun to shoot now.
Are there any particular genres of music that you enjoy photographing more than others?
I don’t know. Obviously anyone who’s moving around quite a lot is pretty good, I shot Glastonbury this year and I think my standouts were probably IDLES - I really enjoyed them. I really enjoyed what I got out of that visually, too.
The Last Dinner Party is always good to photograph in a sort of whimsical kind of way - in the sunlight with their dresses flowing they look really cool and romantic.
I’d really like to shoot Amyl and the Sniffers - I remember judging a photography competition a few years ago and saw a picture of her that immediately grabbed my attention, like “Who is this band?”
Do you have any photo sets that you are most proud of?
It’s really hard to narrow it down like that because every one of them has a different story. There’s definitely some that I feel more of an affinity to but not just one.
At the moment, I’m quite loving my Oasis portraits, because I’ve got a lot of individuals in colour and black and white.
I’m really pleased I got those because, at the time, my assignment was just to shoot them with another band. They were doing this tour together, but I took the time to get some shots of Noel and Liam together, then lots of them individually where they were pulling quite different expressions. Looking up, scratching their chin - I didn’t tell them to do it but the slight nuances in their gaze can just tell a whole different story.
I just think “God, I’m really pleased I did a bit more than I had to for the assignment.”
Do you have any exciting projects in the pipeline that you can give us a sneaky insight into?
I’m working on a book for next year, not of me but of a band I’ve worked with quite a lot over the years. It hasn’t been announced yet so I can’t say too much, but it looks over three years of this particular band, which is quite exciting.
I’m still trying to pull together my own book as well because hitting 30 years, it feels like a really good time to do that. The thing is, I’ve got so many negatives to digitise from 1994 through to 2007 that I could just do that until the end of my days.
Narrowing down my favourite images is really hard; editing is not my forte. I think people often see pictures I’ve taken in a different way to me because I’m so tied to them and they’re looking at it objectively. I’m thinking about what happened on the day and it often wasn’t that glamorous.
What can people expect from your talk at Manchester Art Fair?
I think we’re going to talk about some of the collaborations that I’m showing - the one that I’m very excited about is the one I did with Terry Pastor who created the artwork for David Bowie’s Hunky Dory. He’s worked on an image of mine that I did around the time of David Bowie’s 50th birthday and he’s used all these old, traditional airbrushing techniques and just made it really beautiful.
As it’s an interview, we’ll probably talk about Blur and Oasis - it being Manchester - and maybe some about shoots I’ve done in Manchester like the shot of The White Stripes outside the Academy. There was some graffiti on the wall that said ‘White Stripes we can’t get in!’ so that was a cool shot. It’s one of my favourites.
Scarlet Page will talk at Manchester Art Fair on Saturday 16 November at 1PM.
Find out more about Scarlet’s talk here and book your tickets for Manchester Art Fair.
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