BIO
He studied at Exeter College of Art and later moved to London and spent a year photographing skinheads and new romantics and started contributing to I-D, the Face and Vogue Italia. Nick Knight assisted McKell for his college industrial release which also inspired Knight to photograph similar subcultures.
In 1982 McKell photographed Madonna for her first magazine cover, Smash Hits' rival, 'No 1 Magazine'. At that moment she was completely unknown except on the New York Club Scene - 'No.1' took a gamble and put her on the cover the following week after the exposure of her first hit, 'Holiday' which went to Number One in the British charts and she never looked back.
In 1984 McKell staged a self-curated exhibition in his studio - 15 Westland Place - called 'Iain McKell LIVE'. The concept for the exhibition was to be an artist-in-residence and the public could watch shoots being created as work in progress like an audience. During this show comedians from the British TV comedy 'Comic Strip'- Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Robby Coltrane, Adrian Edmonds and others sat during this performance/photography project. Capturing the attention of the London media ,the show became high profile. The Photographers' Gallery invited McKell the following year to stage 'LIVE 85' at their gallery alongside the group show '5 years of the Face,' in which he was also a contributor. McKell immediately went on to work on advertising campaigns for brands such as Smirnoff and Red Stripe with meetings for these campaigns being held there at the Photographers' Gallery as part of the photographic installation.
McKell carried on photographing for The Observer, The Sunday Times, I-D, L'Uomo Vogue and directing TV commercials and pop promos. In 1995 McKell was singled out as 'most promising new-comer in advertising' by Campaign magazine for Creative Futures Exhibition - as nominated by Malcolm Gaskin. In 2001, McKell staged an exhibition in Brick Lane called 'Then and Now' at Story. Showing three tribes of the eighties - Skinheads/Mods, Clubbers/New Romantics and New Age Travellers.
McKell has gone on to document subcultures that hold a fascination for him - neo gypsies living and travelling in horse-drawn wagons, Thailand psychedelic-trance jungle parties, Wickerman festivals in Scotland, hip hop, rockabilly in the USA, the nineteen-forties swing club in London, 'Lady Luck', new mods and the 'Lewis Bonfire Society' - all of which have been published in I-D, L`Uomo Vogue and The Sunday Independent. This all recently came together in McKell's first published book, spanning three decades of subculture called, 'Fashion Forever,' published by Imprint in Whitechapel.
At present McKell continues to shoot for I-D, Arena, Casa Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Italian Vogue and is working on a new book of photographs. - www.iainmckell.com/ -
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