As the #indieamnesty hashtag that swept across Twitter this April proved, for a generation of Myspace-dwelling, trilby-wearing London music fans, Camden Town will forever be Mecca: a place where jeans were tight, odd Converse were worn and Noel Fielding was regarded as some sort of gothic leisure pirate amongst men. Home, for a time, to Robert Lang, a South African-born photographer who moved to the borough in 2002, the scene may be long gone, but it is now subject of an exhibition at Dalston’s Doomed Gallery, the fittingly titled Filthy Gorgeous Camden Town. And you can almost smell the Red Stripe.
“There was something for everyone regardless of who you were,” describes Lang of the area that was, for a short while in the mid 00s, the Amy Winehouse frequenting epicentre of the London music world. “It had an easy going pub and bar scene where you could go watch a small band play for a fiver only for them to blow up later. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific time but for me, maybe around 2005-2006 was when it hit boiling point.”
It was around then that Lang began to document the scene, capturing wild nights outs (and occasionally wilder night in) of his friends, a selection of which make up the exhibition opening this Thursday. “I chose only women in the photographs as they were more unrestrained than the boys,” explains Lang. “These women were smart, fashionable and witty; they represented everything about our period at that time in London.” Check out the images for yourself below.
Credits
Text Matthew Whitehouse