Jason Manning / Gallery46
Jason created some of the most iconic images of London nightclubs in the 1990s and the early 2000s. He first started this body of work when we commissioned him to take photos for Savoir Vivre, the club listings in the barely formed magazine we were putting together called Sleazenation – “treat it like it’s war photography, don’t worry about us, imagine you’re shooting for National Geographic”.
He seemed to work by the maxim ‘If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough’ producing uncomfortably intimate images that are both sensitive and brutal, often looking like hallucinogenic memories, dispensing with the idea there was a camera present at all. There is a fine line between being a dispassionate observer and a protagonist, but his presence, sometimes reflected in the expressions of his subjects, helps to ensure you feel as if these fleeting moments are a sordid peep show only you bear witness to.
TRISTAN DELLAWAY & MARTIN J TICKNER Art Directors, SLEAZENATION
‘London’s gay nightlife was always about a lot more than copping off over a thumping h-nrg soundtrack. Jason’s photography – a cool eye observing the joy, the loneliness, the freedom, the lust, the intoxication, the companionship, the boredom.. all of it – inherently understood that. A lot of photographers worked for gay style bible ‘Attitude’ in the 90s and 00s, but none captured the reality of the club scene as starkly in all its ugly beauty.’
ADAM MATTERA Former editor, ATTITUDE Magazine
