After receiving a camera for his 15th birthday, Jack Tennant quickly turned his lens on the humans around him. The British photographer was born into a family of market traders and raised with all of the skills needed to charm strangers into letting him take their picture. He never stopped. “It’s something I’ve been around since I was literally weeks old,” he tells us. “So I started to stop people on the street, taking their portraits and peeking into their worlds. I like to immerse myself in what I’m shooting.”
Now living in London and shooting full time, Jack’s latest series For The Love Of Con, saw him dig deep into the international phenomenon of Comic Con. “I’m interested in the people,” he explains. “I like the escapism of it. I like the clothes and the effort put in, collecting and assembling outfits all year ready for this big show.” For the past three years he’s attended the annual London event, fascinated by the spectacle, the celebratory atmosphere; he’s there to meet the individuals behind the masks as much as to admire costumes themselves. While most people attending put their all into a single look for the weekend, Jack came across some who committed to multiple costume changes a day – either swinging by the boot of their car or a nearby hotel room to switch things up.
“It’s a big cosplay holiday,” he says. “It’s a safe space very much adopted and formed by LGBTQ+ communities, so it kinda has an alternate pride atmosphere to it. Plus it’s a cool spectacle that I’d recommend anyone checking out — you don’t even need a ticket because it’s so interesting just watching everyone arrive and mill around outside in their costumes.” When it comes to taking portraits of the best dressed, Jack notes the importance of striking the right balance, of accessing the person behind the mask. “The unexpected can be beautiful but there are some poses that are way too big for the kind of images I want to make,” he says. “I try to explain to people that it’s them I want to photograph, not their cosplay character. Then you get this edge of two personas, where maybe someone is a bit shy but they’re wearing a giant, violent costume.”
Naturally, a lot of fascinating conversations were had along the way, offering insight into the lives of the subjects and the fictional faces they’re portraying, but also how far they’ve travelled to attend (right across the UK) and how they made their weapons (with serious imagination). “The silver gun image in my series was fun to chat about,” Jack says. “The maker explained to me how it has a wooden core with a foam and duct tape handle; there’s a plastic vitamin container and a bleach bottle lid in there somewhere; some plumbing pipe, all glued and bolted together; wrapped and spray-painted silver then aged to look like a weapon that’s seen some action. I love that homemade, resourceful attitude.”
For every person there peacocking, eager to be photographed and show off their costume, there’s a less flashy individual — and it’s the latter that really drew Jack in. “I’m interested in cosplayers who are a little more introverted,” he tells us. “There’s something more to uncover there, story-wise, and those are the pictures I find more arresting.”
It’s something felt in Jack’s favourite image from the series, the one of a cosplayer wearing a pig head. “It’s Inosuke Hashibira from the anime series Demon Slayer,” he says. “There’s movement and energy to the image, but also a pause in time and calmness. They’re right there present with the camera — I felt it when I took the photo and was so scared it wouldn’t come across. The details, like the wisp of hair across their face and their braces, really make it. It’s exactly as I remembered it in the moment and that’s rare.”
Credits
All photography Jackie Tennant