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‘FInn! Finn! FINN! ” Johnnie Shand Kydd struggles to keep his eyes off his curious man. Finn may be an amazingly sweet dog but he doesn’t listen – and he’s missing out on this trip.
At least the artist has experience dealing with unruly people. In the 1990s, he found himself with the Young British Artists, who were given the opportunity to shoot dramatic, chaotic and magical paintings that gave birth to Tracey Emin, Damien HirstSarah Lucas and others. Shot in black and white, these images evoke a gathering of artists painting in their studios, easels in hand. Shand Kydd said: “I wasn’t interested in that. Instead, the pictures show Hirst balancing a tower of hats on his head, Emin in a rubber boat with Georgina Starr, a pregnant Sam Taylor-Johnson (then Taylor-Wood) and lots of partying, dancing and dancing.”
Shand Kydd wasn’t a photographer when he started photographing the scene – he says he had never taken a picture in his life – but he did. he was a former art dealer who understands artists and their immature egos and insecurities. The YBAs quickly relaxed before him. “It wasn’t really that hard,” he says with a laugh, happy to get his skills down. “Drawing is the easiest thing in the world. You just point and click. I’m finding something to say that’s very difficult.”
Well, that’s getting your studies’ to believe. Many of his YBA photos were taken during benders, which led Shand Kydd to collect a series of disturbing photos, not that he ever thought of publishing them. “Why ruin a friendship with these wonderful artists for one picture?” He says. The most important issue for the photographer was continuity. “I was a little older so I didn’t have the same energy. If they had gone on a 48-hour bender, I might have been out after 24 hours. Although usually you’re almost out and then Groucho’s double doors open and the next 20 people walk in.”
His photos, which were published in the 1997 book Spit Fire, no doubt caused a lot of frustration among some people, who were carefree people who liked to love themselves over hard work. Shand Kydd, however, was perceptive enough to realize that a night like this is being used by modern artists as a studio accessory. “You always see people at risk, in deep conversation in the morning. This was about exchanging ideas. Besides, I’m sure David Bowie can’t remember making his best music.”
And there was a lot of hard work. “They didn’t need expensive things, expensive warehouses or anything like that,” he says of the fertile ground for production. Every time he visited Hirst’s studio in Stroud, Gloucestershire, he came away feeling inspired. Damien believed with all his heart that there was no such thing as ‘No.’ Everything was possible.
Now 66 years old, Shand Kydd still keeps in touch with his old friends. He recently went to lunch with Lucas – “you can tell any story and he’ll approach it from a different angle” – and Taylor-Johnson is apparently making a film around one of his pictures. Emin, meanwhile, prepared his new Ramsholt exhibition, which is on display at his gallery in Margate and will soon be published as a photograph. Named after the small Suffolk village to which his mother moved in the 1960s (she still lives there – on the day we meet, she celebrates her 93rd birthday), Ramsholt has photos taken on the dog walk of Shand Kydd and Finn and Finn’s daughter Zelda, who is sadly not well enough to join us today.
Ramsholt looks beautiful in the April sun: red clouds drift over the River Deben while the streets are lined with St Mark’s flies. The sunlight is not, however, the way Shand Kydd likes to paint the bleak and bleak images you’ll find in his book: empty fields, mist-covered trees, uprooted trees. Director John Maybury told her the footage looked “criminal”. Emin saw them for the first time and said: “All your pictures are of death.”
Did he agree? “I did. Because it’s nature you can’t have spring without winter. And mushrooms grow on rotting trees – it’s all part of the rebirth thing. One of his favorite pictures is of daisies. He just said, ‘That’s what happens when we leave.’ I thought that was great.”
Being used to taking pictures of other people, Shand Kydd believes that these pictures are personal things that he has uploaded. In the story to accompany the book, he touches on past family problems: an uncle who died when he was a teenager doing air shows, and the breakdown of his father’s relationship with the brother of Shand Kydd, a novelist who died in Cambodia in 2004.
He also provides a fascinating account of Ramsholt himself, traversing time and story in a way that, he hopes, reflects the dreams you might have of traveling like this. We hear about the American B-17 Flying Fortress that crashed in 1945, killing eight people (two survived), and the area that recently attracted Ketamine smugglers.
The point he is making no that Ramsholt is a very interesting place. He said: “It’s quite ordinary. Rather, it’s a reminder that beauty and attraction are everywhere, if we try to look. He pointed to a delicate leaf hanging from a tree to make his point. He didn’t have a camera with him to take pictures today.”
In fact, on many of the trips that inspired his new book he neglected to bring a camera – the big stills he liked were “too heavy” when he had two dogs. When he saw something special, he would go back and photograph it later. “Self-consciousness was thrown out the window,” he says, laughing. “It’s very different from how most artists work.”
But Shand Kydd has always gone against the grain. Realizing that photography could be his career after the success of Spit Fire, he moved to Naples to further his education, the images of which appeared in his 2009 book Siren City. But his self-deprecation means he’s more likely to dwell on his problems than his successes – like the time he was rushed to shoot Madonna at the UN conference in New York and missed her moment because her camera was still in her back pocket when she walked past.
It was at this event, surrounded by celebrities and feeling the pinch, that Shand Kydd found himself hanging out with “the only other person who matched his depth”. After chewing the fat for some time, he thought it would be rude if he didn’t give a picture of this young man and his wife. “I didn’t think anything of it until a few years later the president.” He laughs. “I went back through the contact sheets and I’m pretty sure they’re Donald and Melania.” What was he like? “A few pence short of a pound, but dear. But then I thought P Diddy was pretty cool so I’m no judge of character. “
We’ve been walking for an hour and we’ve had more than our lunch of scampi and cider at the Ramsholt Arms. Outside the wall is a plaque commemorating the victims and survivors of the B-17 crash. Life is death. Things seem to be collapsing in Shand Kydd’s career. When his father remarried, he became Charles and Diana Spencer’s brother – they went on vacations and played together (he still had contact with Charles).
He recalls working on the launch of Sensation – the Saatchi fashion show that helped propel YBAs into the stratosphere – after learning of Diana’s death. He said: “I could walk from the museum to where the people were crying. “So the two things are very connected to me.” On reflection, he sees similarities between Diana and her predecessors. He smiles: “They both used to detonate bombs to see what would happen.”
Ten years after Diana’s death, Angus FairhurstYBA who appears in Spit Fire, killed himself while traveling in Scotland. “I didn’t know he was in such a dark place,” said Shand Kydd. “One thing I’ve learned is that you never really know what’s going on in other people’s minds.”
He believes that Fairhurst’s death caused many of his friends to slow down – to grow up, think and focus on what was most important: work. However, on a personal level, Shand Kydd credits Finn and Zelda for keeping him on the straight and narrow. He said: “If he is destroyed in front of animals, it can be very confusing. Such is his devotion to his dogs that he will not leave the house in the evening unless he finds someone to sit down.”
“He’s a beautiful boy,” she says, looking at Finn, who is almost asleep on top of his shirt. Another story that feels completely dependent on their master.
Ramsholt by Johnnie Shand Kydd (CHEERIO Publishing, £30) is published on 7 May. To support the Guardian, order your book from guardianbookshop.com. Shipping fees may apply.
