Ewen Spencer

Ewen studied under the tutorage of British Photographers Paul Reas and Mark Power at the School of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. He graduated In 1997 and quickly became known for his ground breaking editorial during the late 90’s for The Face & Sleazenation magazine. He immediately spoke to an audienceInterested in subcultures, multiculturalism, music, graphic art, photography, fashion and primarily youth culture.

In 2001 Ewen embarked upon a project simply called Teenagers documenting British adolescents as they come to terms with socialising, dating and sex. His signature flash style became synonymous with a close aspect to his subjects. What separates him from other social-documentarians is the feeling you get from The pictures that he knows and likes his subjects, that they trust him enough To allow him entry and that he has an understanding of what’s going on without being embedded in the scenes him.

The Teenagers project was shown at the Exposure photo festival in Hereford, UK in 2001, as part of ‘Jam London –Tokyo’ showing at both the Barbican in London and The Tokyo Opera House Gallery and was also exhibited at the Rencontre d’Arles in 2004, curated by Martin Parr, where it was shortlisted for a project assistance award. Not surprisingly, in 2002 Martin Parr tipped Ewen as the most promising newcomer

Of that year. Commercial clients starting calling and he began working with bands Producing cover art and behind the scenes tour material for The Streets & The White Stripes. There’s many reasons why Ewen continues to be a sought after Photographer for clients. He’s quick, precise, spontaneous, and collaborative, with

a great eye for what’s current, on trend and in line with brand objectives. Over the last 2 years he’s produced work for Puma, Sony, Nike, Adidas, Box fresh, T mobile, Vodafone and Lastminute.com.

Most of Ewens work is about the sub cultures. You can see in his work he puts his all into it and pushes for the best all of the time. His images are very tight and close. What I mean here is that his work really focuses on the foreground and never really the background of an image. Also a thing to note he has a style that you can clearly see throughout his work in general. His style is reportage and capturing the moment just like Martin Parr did. Going back to his style you can see that he has quite a harsh look to them creating a bold look and feel. With most of his images he uses a of the camera flash creating bold and in your face shadows.

Ewen mentioned that besides the northern soul scene of which he knew a lot about and experienced the other sub culture groups he did not know much about so for example the grime scene that he photographed not only required photographing and documenting, first he had to be accepted and had to build up links within that scene and culture. This is one of the many reasons he has been able to get such stunning and unique photographs. Clothing companies how produce street style clothing such as boxfresh have used Ewens photographs and style in their advertising campaigns, In my view making them more desirable and more popular within what he shoots.