Two Author Portraits - Part 1

September 2020

Booker prize long listed author Gabriel Krauze on the South Kilburn estate

September is a bumper month for book publishing, with many books that had been delayed by lockdown now all being released in a rush - an estimated 600 hardbacks were being published on the 3rd of September! So author portraits is the theme of the month.

The two that stuck out the most were, Gabrial Krause, with his debut “Who they was” and Andrew O’Hagen “Mayflies” - two fairly opposite offerings.

Gabriel Krause was involved with gangs on the South Kilburn Estate where he lives, while studying English at university. His autobiographical novel “Who they was” is on the Booker prize Longlist and is a vignette into a violent London that is often unseen.

I met him on the very edgy South Kilburn estate. He arrived in a BMW with two of his friends, followed by another friend on a super loud Quad bike. We were discussing where to take the photos as I was cautiously unpacking and setting up my light, when three youths from the estate showed up and warned us that the street was ‘very live’ and to be careful near the road, as last week there had been a drive by shooting at the shop round the corner.

Despite this I was keen to get a shot of him with the oppressive estate in the background - a triumph of architecture that manages to make housing look like a prison.

His friends were keen to get in the shot too, proud that their mate was gonna be in The Times and one was happy to be my assistant moving and looking after my lights (result!).

Their anxiety over being quite so visible made this part relatively short, and we moved onto one of the landings. This was where The Times would choose their picture from, but I was keen to try to break the cliche of the space, and made the top photo, a high key (optimistic?) shot of him that suggested hope and escape, rather than confinement. In contrast I also shot the full prison-like corridors with their metal bars, below.

A note on the fashion, we joked that he was hedging his bets for a sponsorship deal - either Adidas or Nike, and paired up with rolled up balaclavas and Diamond teeth Grill, this was slightly resembling a ‘edgy’ street style fashion shoot - life, imitating fashion, imitating life, imitating rap artists. Real wasn’t important, projecting image and status was the ‘real’ bit. But within that his honest personality and his friends support were clearly visible.

It was a pleasure to chat to him and learn about life on the estate, also two of his friends are from his university, and one (my volunteer assistant *) had just got his pilot’s licence. I congratulated him, though said that it was unlucky that so many flights were now canceled. He said that he was gonna work as a pilot in the middle east, as is was impossible for him to fly in the UK or Europe as he had been to jail.

* The friends all asked me not to use any real names