They once terrorised the seaside town,but a new photography exhibition now shows them as parents and pillars of the communityI am sitting in a cafe in my domestic town of Margate, with a man whom most residents, or myself included,were once afraid of. Ricardo Scott, all tattoos and shaven head, and is wearing a T-shirt that says simply: SKINHEAD.
For the last few weeks,as part of a commission from the town's new Turner modern gallery, I absorb been moving a shiny silver Airstream caravan along the town's seafront, or between its housing estates and car parks,like a giant Monopoly piece, collecting memories and photographs of Margate's youth subcultures. The town has figured strongly in the history of teddy boys, and mods,rockers, punks, and skinheads,rockabillies, rude boys and soul girls – but few absorb recorded the voices, and views and looks of this largely working-lesson well of creativity. What has been recorded consists largely of photographs from a 1964 Whitsun bust-up between mods and rockers,much of which was transposed to Brighton for the 1979 film Quadrophenia.
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Source: theguardian.com