ALASDAIR MCLELLAN: “Never Gonna Give You Up”

032c WORKSHOP / Joerg Koch is pleased to present “Never Gonna Give You Up,” a selection of portraits from photographer ALASDAIR McLELLAN’s “Lads” series (2001-2011).

Born in the north of England in 1974, McLellan studied photography at the University of Nottingham. Today, he’s based in London, but his hometown of Doncaster is never far behind in his work. McLellan’s portraits of young British males are infused with the strange pallor and virility of the region – a region whose contrasts are mirrored in the “Lads’” closely but roughly cropped hair, or their immediate yet sensuous gazes. Appropriately, McLellan counts his fellow northerner Morrissey among his major influences: both emerged from a background of an English realism as outspoken as it is full of longing.

As a photographer whose work is so deeply imbued in his regional roots, McLellan also found formative inspiration in the work of Bruce Weber, who hails from a similarly industrial area on the other side of the Atlantic. Growing up in the late 80s, McLellan envisioned his boyhood friends featured in a magazine in the same iconic way he saw in Weber’s photography in titles like Sky, The Face and Interview. “I wanted to take the people I knew and cast them in the media I was exposed to. And that’s something I continue to do even when casting models today.”

McLellan is a veteran contributor to 032c, where he has published both fashion editorials and portrait series – often provocatively blurring the line between the two. His work has meanwhile appeared in campaigns for brands such as Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein and Supreme, and publications such as i-D, Arena Homme +, multiple international editions of Vogue, and The New York Times.

032c Workshop / Joerg Koch is an exhibition space in Berlin. Centered around an eight-meter-long vitrine designed by Konstantin Grcic, its programming features several exhibition series, exploring the idea of the archive, the auteur, or the unseen.