SMILE PLEASE?

After the success of my first Kickstarter for my Ocean Colour Scene book, ‘Behind the Scene’, I was inspired to try again and crowdfund to publish

a book of all of my favourite work. Working title; "Tony Briggs, Smile please? Photography, collaboration and culture", a retrospective look back at my career, covering all my favourite work since my move from Sunderland to London in 1987. 

 

As with 'Behind the Scene', I’m aiming high for the finest print quality but this time it's a glossy hardback A5 brick of a book, designed and crafted again by the brilliant Pete Kelsey.

 

The end of the 20th century marked a high point for photography’s collaboration with popular culture. This was before smart technology and social media, where the photographer’s image still dominated. I was really lucky to catch the end of this era and to be perfectly placed when modernist subculture came to the forefront again and be in pole position for the second wave of alternative comedy.

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This riotous collection of photographs and anecdotes accompanies one 17 year-old’s journey from Sunderland to the bright lights of London, who found himself shaping many of the key icons and cultural references of ‘Cool Britannia’. A career spent working across music, fashion, comedy and advertising grants remarkable access to the giddy spirit of the times and reflects photography’s then dominance for expressing its key cultural, commercial, and societal obsessions. All the pictures will be accompanied with anecdotes and stories from cast and crew with maybe with a bit of gossip from me from my position behind the camera, a regular uneducated bloke who somehow managed to blag his way into a career and work with some of our generation's biggest personalities.

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To support the project, view all of the packages and pre-order your book please click here