‘They followed me saying, “Go on, mister, take our picture!” Eventually, I gave in and just said, “Stand there and don’t smile.” Apparently, they’re now quite famous around the area’
Although I was born in the far north of Scotland, Merseyside has felt like home ever since I moved there in 1983. I had no O-levels and Wallasey was the only art school that would take me. In some ways Liverpool was a world away from the small fishing town I’d grown up in, but I come from a large working-class family and felt an affinity with the people I started photographing in the north of the city.
This was taken in Kirkdale in March 1986, while I was studying documentary photography. I was shooting buildings that had been knocked down, and wandered up a street just as the light was fading. Joseph, the red-headed kid on the left, followed me from one end to the other with his pals, saying: “Go on, mister, take our photograph.” Eventually I gave in. I just said: “Stand there and don’t smile.” That was the only instruction I generally gave – and I’ve since used the same method on fashion jobs. So those kids made the photograph really, not me. I just chose the background and where the light was.
