A Conversation with Gavin Watson

Anyone with a turd’s worth of knowledge about what we do around here already knows that Gavin Watson has been one of our favorite photographers for ages. The images he’s collected for books like Skins & Punks and Raving ’89 have shown how the smiling, glowering, gurning faces of British youth culture have stretched themselves across decades. The pictures he gave us for our latest Photo Issue, however, seem to stare out at a world on the other side of the young tribe, when the love of your life’s ditched you and the only thing you have left is your drinking problem. I called him up to talk about “Night Sketches” and to reminisce about the olden days.

VICE: Hi Gav. What are you doing?
Gavin Watson: I’m getting ready to act a scene in Ben Drew’s new film.

Plan B Ben Drew? The rapper-turned-crooner?
Yeah.

Oh wow. What’s his film?
It’s a bit like Nil by Mouth. It’s grim, obscene! I don’t think I’ll be watching it more than once, but it’s very good. Very inspired.

How did you meet that guy again?
He was a massive fan of my work—especially the photo where Neville is by the Police State graffiti.

I love that one. It was in Skins & Punks. And the ones in our Photo Issue were taken just before we made Skins & Punks together, right?
They were. They were taken around the time I met you, so you know the whole story behind them. I’d stopped drinking, lost my girlfriend—I’d taken all my crutches away. I was feeling terrible and very hurt. Depression isn’t the right word for it, but I can’t think of how else to describe the way I felt at that time. It was painful, but it wasn’t actual depression. It was very motivating, if you know what I mean. And then I met you, while I was living in Stockwell. Then you had to deal with me for a year doing that book. You know, I was saying yesterday how much I appreciate you. You took those photos and helped me grow into this world. If you hadn’t put up with my lunacy and taught me how to work again, I wouldn’t be able to do my job now.

I had been going through some mild lunacy at that time too, I think. The stars were aligned. This interview is turning out to be really emo.
Yeah, but in all seriousness, I came to realize a lot with those photos. I didn’t think they would mean so much, but for the first time in my life I realized that I could take my environment and put it to use. Now, what I should have done was put those joyful photos of 15-year-old skinheads next to the ones that were in the Photo Issue, those taken by a depressed 41-year-old man going through a crisis. They’ve been really slagged off on the site, but I love it. Some people are all like “it’s brought down the whole VICE product!”

People on the internet are good at saying stuff like that.
I love it, though. It was the whole point—those were pictures of the only things I had to photograph. The AA meetings in the winter in Stockwell. That was it.

Those AA meetings are so grim. You walk away feeling like you’ve done penance.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, what was I going to do? Fucking pottery every night of the week? Yoga, maybe?

They’re also held in the evening so you don’t go down to the pub.
Yeah. Another thing about that part of my life was that it was the beginning of my heartbreak, my total obsession. She was everything in the universe. Everything I saw, everything I looked at. I needed her, but I also had an addiction problem. It was like Fight Club; I had a co-dependence.

What happens at a co-dependency meeting? Do they just go on all night because nobody wants to leave?
Haha! What’s dawned on me since—and I know it’s going to sound like I’m shitting words here—is that it was really the co-dependence that was the problem. It was a lot more powerful than alcoholism. I was drinking because I was dependent upon my girlfriend and I couldn’t leave her, so I’d do everything I could to avoid the confrontation. My liking for beer made me end up in the the pub seven days a week, so I developed this fucking awful, bloody habit, and I was all, “I’ve got a drinking problem. I can’t do it.” Then it dawned on me that the co-dependence was at the root of all my desperation.

Do you think if they advertised a 24-hour co-dependency meeting it’d have a really high turnout?
Haha! Yes! Especially if there was an after party.

ANDY CAPPER