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Middle Class Revolting
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Gareth Pyper
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I've spent the last six months photographing these kids. And over the
last few months my presence has been accepted, despite initial fears
that I worked for the drug squad or that somebody's parents had hired
me to spy on them.
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Everywhere you looked was a sea of black T-shirts, chains,
unnatural contact lenses, spiked hair, white make-up, hand cuffs, and
on one occasion a World War II gas-mask. Part of me was probably just
jealous. At 15 I was a skinny, pale-faced, long-haired, grumpy Kurt
Cobain wannabe who would have given anything to be part of what I'm
documenting nine years later.
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They used to hang out in the park facing St Anne's
Cathedral-it was a good place to skate and the annexes and hedges
proved adequate cover for underage drinking. But the re-development
of the open plan `Writers Corner' forced them to move. Botanic
Gardens wasn't an option because there were too many "spidey glue
bags" so they moved to City Hall. The whole thing has snowballed to
the 200-odd kids that hang out every Saturday.
Stereotyped as a collective, the group breaks down into separate
cliques. The Punks are top of the food chain and tend to be older
than most, 16-19. Apart from Buckfast one of their main incentives
for hanging around is younger kids with pocket money. The Goths tend
to peak at about 15. One of my favourites has to be the boy who comes
each week dressed as a gothic film icon, one Saturday he's from The
Crow the next The Matrix and so on. He carries it off rather well.
They all hate the younger kids who hang around, making them uncool.
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I've never actually seen any drugs, though lots of marijuana
paraphernalia. And they get away with drinking in one of the most
open places in town because of the sheer mass of them and the open
layout. At the first sign of any police or security guards the word
spreads and they can be off in seconds.
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But when someone inevitably clings to a tree and spews
everywhere, he instantly has a gang of mates sitting him down and
getting water. And I have pictures of all of it.
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