Gavin Watson grew up in a typical working class overspill town that surround London. Stumbling into photography aged 14, becoming a skinhead at 15, he inadvertently documented the real social interracial music scene behind the media’s right-wing portrayal of a demonised youth culture. Undiscovered until the 1990s, his work became a blueprint for the work of filmmaker Shane Meadows, and significantly influences a generation of photographers working today.

“I was a shy child. At fourteen, I felt completely isolated from society. At Christmas 1978 I went to Woolworths with mum for my present. I was sure I wanted binoculars, but in the glass cabinet there was also a camera. Standing there I thought, ‘fuck it’, I’ll have the camera. I just took pictures of my family and friends, it was all very insular.

When I saw my very first prints something went BANG. I was drawn into photography on the spot. The following year, as me and my mates became skinheads I took more and more photos and found myself using the camera like a pro. But I was still nervous, so I wouldn’t photograph other people: It was all about my friends. If I hadn’t been a skinhead, the result would be very different. They’d all be V signing at the camera, shouting ‘fuck off you wanker!’ It’s why I haven’t got the atypical pictures of what society thinks skinheads are, or even what skinheads think they are. My photos have Asian kids, they have black kids. My first girlfriend was Pakistani. But why should I have to explain that to anyone?

My pictures went unseen until years after when they were discovered in a box amongst thousands at a community darkroom facility which I used to make prints. They were selected for a book about youth culture. And that’s when it all started, my first book was published and I was part of a street style exhibition in the Victoria & Albert Museum. But I wasn’t prepared for any form of success, it all went over my head.

A decade later, when Shane Meadows made This is England, I was able to deal with what I’d created. He discovered my book and made a story out of it — it’s very close to the bone, like watching my life.

Everything goes back to my subjects. I loved my friends. I would have died for them, and I nearly did. And I loved photography. And there it was. That was it.”