The NME Years

An analogue music archive, 1995–2005

The leftovers

In the mid-nineties, I was in London, working as a photographer for the NME.

I was young, broke, and shooting on film. It was an analogue world. I could rarely afford duplicate sets of transparencies, so the originals travelled: labelled, sleeved and posted to picture desks, magazines and agencies in London, Amsterdam, New York, Sydney… wherever.

Some came back. Many did not.

So the archive I kept was never a complete record of those years. It was made up of third and fourth choices, outtakes and images that, for one reason or another, never made it. The leftovers.

Recently, a group of photographs from the NME years resurfaced. They brought back pictures I thought had disappeared and started to reconnect a body of work that had survived only in fragments.

So here it is: a personal record of music, people, crowds, backstage rooms, roads and places between 1995 and 2005.

Explore the archive

01 — Oasis Live at Knebworth

10 August 1996. The band, the crowd, and a day that defined an era.

02 — Festival Faces

Donington 1996 · Creamfields 1999 · Glastonbury 2000.

03 — The Prodigy

Knebworth, 10 August 1996. On stage, in the crowd, and backstage.

04 — Live 8

Hyde Park, 2 July 2005. A day of music, and the reunion of Pink Floyd.