GAVIN WATSON’S FIRST PHOTOS

Our friend

Gavin Watson has a new show coming up, but it’s not what you might be expecting. The show at London Gallery West will be made up of images from the first few rolls of film ever to pass through his hands. The show runs from March 19th through May 9th. We had a chat with Gavin about the show and the photos.
Vice: Hey Gav, tell us all about the new show.
Gavin: They’re images from my first ever camera I got, in 1978. I was 13. It was the Hanimex I talk about in the now famous Woolworths story. For some reason I really wanted a pair of binoculars and a camera, I just wasn’t sure which I wanted more. Luckily I went for the camera.

How many images from the first few rolls made it into your later collections of work?
Well, only one so far, the picture in Skins and Punks of my brother jumping off the sofa dressed as Super Man.

What are the rest of the shots in the show like? Are they all pretty domestic?
There are 40 shots like that going up that have never been seen before. Basically they’re all shots a 13-year-old would take, which is of course exactly what they are.

What do you think it says about photography that there can be an exhibition of the first few rolls a kid took?
If I think about it, it just makes me laugh. When I went through them all I was interested in seeing if there was anything in them that showed what was to come. I wanted too see the roots of it all up there and out there, see if I can start owning this whole strange journey photography has taken me on.

Do you think you found any similarities?
Yeah, there was no difference between these early shots and what I did later, they were just taken on a basic camera. There’s still lots of energy coming off them.

Are there enough of them to make a new book? Or is this just going to be a one-off exhibition?
I want to do a small book of them, there’s about 100 interesting ones.

Are there many characters in the show who reappear later on in your work, apart from your brother Nev of course.
Symond and my mate Richard are in them, they are in both my Skins book.