A glimpse into the incredible career of photographer Gavin Watson

Gavin Watson was born in London in 1965 and grew up on an estate in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. He bought a Hanimex camera from Woolworths in his early teens and started taking pictures. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, Watson returned to London and became a darkroom assistant at Camera Press. He continued to photograph his younger brother Neville and their group of skinhead friends in High Wycombe.

The "Wycombe Skins" were part of the working-class skinhead subculture brought together by a love of ska music and fashion. Although the skinhead style became associated with the right-wing extremism of political groups like the National Front in the 1970s, Watson's photographs document a time and place where the subculture was racially mixed and inclusive. His photographs have been published in the books Skins (1994) and Skins and Punks (2008), and director Shane Meadows cited them as inspiration for his film This is England (2006). In 2011 and 2012, Watson photographed campaigns for Dr Martens and began a project with singer Plan B.

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