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Abstract
This photo essay presents a posthumous consideration of the work of Shaun Bloodworth, photographer of musicians from the UK underground dance scene in the early twenty-first century. The article argues that Bloodworth sets up in his portraits a connection between figure and background that involves the same re-territorialization of the urban landscape that occurred in the dance scene itself in the late 1980s, when dance music promoters illegally occupied dilapidated unused spaces for parties in cities such as Sheffield, London and Manchester. The catalog of work that Bloodworth left on his death in 2016 can be seen as a series of images which play on a tension between anonymity and celebrity, both of the musicians and of the architectural setting.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Acknowledgment
The copyright for all images remains with Shaun Bloodworth’s family.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
Notes
1 Brian L. Ott and Bill D. Herman, “Mixed Messages: Resistance and Reappropriation in Rave Culture,” Western Journal of Communication 67, no. 3 (2003): 205.
2 David Hesmondhalgh, “The British Dance Music Industry: A Case Study of Independent Cultural Production,” British Journal of Sociology 49, no. 2 (1998): 234.
3 Lionel R. McColvin, “Anonymity in Music,” The Musical Times 71, no. 1046 (April 1, 1930): 317. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/914492 (accessed March 20, 2018).
4 Henry Hazlitt, “The Cult of Anonymity,” Nation (October 30, 1930): 350, quoted in Anne Ferry, “Anonymity: The History of a Word,” New Literary History 33, no. 2 (2002): 198.
5 The “mugshot” itself was developed at the same time as statistics were starting to be used, allowing recorded, individual data to be compared in order to better understand generic types. It is associated with criminality not only because the person can be identified, but also because their traits can be compared to those of hundreds of others, in the search for a “criminal type.”
6 Danna Takako, “Eye Candy: Shaun Bloodworth and Stuart Hammersley,” Fabric Blog, 2010, https://www.fabriclondon.com/blog/view/eye-candy-shaun-bloodworth-stuart-hammersley (accessed February 24, 2017).
7 Will Straw, “Authorship,” in Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ed. B. Horner and T. Swiss (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 203.
8 Nav Haq, Rave and Its Influence on Art and Culture (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2016), 31.
9 Sivan Lewin, “Loft Cause,” in Night Fever: Club Writing in The Face, ed. R. Benson (London: Boxtree, 1997), 89–90.
10 Hillegonda Rietveld, This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 18. See also Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound (London: Routledge, 1999), 23.
11 Factory Records employed designer Ben Kelly to renovate the building in such a way that its industrial detailing would be celebrated.
12 Takako, “Eye Candy.”
13 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place (London: Routledge, 2003), 204.
14 Stuart Hammersley, interview by email 5 January 2017.
15 Martin Dust, interview by email 3 January 2017.
16 Stuart Hammersley, by email 5 January 2017.
17 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity [1992], trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 1995), 78.
18 Martin Dust, interview by email 3 January 2017.
19 This reclamation of childhood recreation recalls the development of the original adventure playgrounds – post-World War II bombsites – before they became subject to health and safety audits. But there is a difference in the kind of abandoned place: one is the result of willful wartime destruction, the other of neglect. See, for example, Stephen Willats, The Lurky Place (London: Lisson Gallery, 1978).
20 Stanley Kubrick, dir., Clockwork Orange (1971).
21 Daniel Barber, dir., Harry Brown (2009).
22 Stuart Hammersley, interview by email, 5 January 2017.
23 Ibid.
24 Anon., “Shaun Bloodworth,” Sheffield Culture Guide, n.d. Available online: http://www.ourfaveplaces.co.uk/info/contributors/shaun-bloodworth (accessed February 24, 2017).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daniel Cookney
Daniel Cookney is an educator and designer with transdisciplinary interests. His research and practice work has explored a number of areas of communication design, with a notable specialism in the performance of identity, particularly within the music industry. As a writer, he contributes to a number of print and online publications and is coeditor of Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury, 2017).