A very special Talk Photo and combined exhibition opening with Homer Sykes
Homer Sykes produced some of the most iconic documentary photographs of the Blitz Club scene in London around 1980. His images captured the “Blitz Kids” at the precise moment the New Romantic movement was evolving from a small underground subculture into one of the defining visual and musical styles of the 1980s.
Date: Saturday 13th June
Time: 5pm (doors 4.30pm)
Location: Upstairs in the Gallery at Oriel Colwyn
Unlike polished fashion photographers working in studios or magazines, Homer Sykes approached the Blitz as a documentary photographer, giving his work an immediate, intimate, and observational quality. His photographs are filled with crowded dancefloors, dramatic makeup, military-inspired tailoring, theatrical poses, gender-fluid styling, and the experimental energy of London’s art-school culture. Rather than simply recording outfits, Sykes documented how young people used fashion and performance to reinvent themselves and escape the restrictions of everyday life.
One of the most striking aspects of Sykes’ Blitz photographs is how raw and handmade the scene still appears. Later representations of the New Romantic movement often became glossy, commercialised, and heavily tied to the fashion industry, but Sykes captured the culture before that transformation. His photographs preserve the atmosphere of Blitz when it was still a relatively small weekly gathering fuelled by creativity, fantasy, and self-expression rather than celebrity. Many of the clothes worn by club-goers were handmade or adapted from vintage military uniforms, historical costume, Hollywood glamour, science fiction, cabaret, and Bowie-inspired androgyny. The photographs reveal a generation treating nightlife itself as a form of performance art.
Sykes’ Blitz and Heaven photographs sit naturally alongside his wider body of documentary work, which often explores British subcultures, public rituals, and the ways people communicate identity through clothing and appearance. His work captures not only the fashion of the era, but also the social atmosphere surrounding it: the anticipation outside clubs, the theatricality of entering exclusive spaces, and the sense that nightlife could become a stage for reinvention.
A rare opportunity to hear Homer talk about his Blitz Club images featuring in the new exhibition.
An event not to be missed!
Homer Sykes is a professional magazine and documentary photographer. His principal commissions in Britain during the 1970's - 1980's, were for what used to be called the "weekend colour supplements" such as The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Observer, You and the Sunday Express magazines.
He covered weekly news for Newsweek, Time, and the former Now! Magazine; covering conflicts in Israel, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland, as well as weekly news in the UK. Over the last fifty years he has shot numerous magazine portraits of the famous and not so famous - at home, at work and at play. Having always worked on personal photographic documentary projects along side commercial magazine assignments.