Alan Lodge isn’t just a photojournalist with a particular focus on British subcultures. He’s lived them.
Leaving a stable career at the London Ambulance Service to join the traveling community, he roamed the country with family and friends in old caravans and buses, experiencing the heyday of the free festival “circuit.”
Since then, he’s played an active role in many of the prominent counterculture and socio-environmental movements – from land rights and anti-war protests to LGBTQ+ Pride – all with a camera in hand.
Now, Nottingham Trent University – where Lodge studied photography – will exhibit his photos.
Alan Lodge: Common Grounds: Counterculture & Confrontation Since 1976 will tell the story of how movements beyond mainstream society have helped shape the UK’s cultural and social landscape today.
Featuring around 80 photographs alongside 35mm slide projections, moving images and personal archives, the exhibition sheds a rare, insider’s light on these events.
On display will be frames that Lodge took at what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield.
In the summer of 1985, the photojournalist joined the Peace Convoy on its annual journey to Stonehenge, seeing first-hand the now-infamous clashes between the police and travelers.
The “battle” resulted in one of the most violent mass arrests in British history, with prominent eyewitness accounts describing “extreme” police brutality.
Lodge began his studies in Nottingham in 1990, becoming involved with the city’s influential house music collective known as the DIY Sound System.
Two years later, he went on to shoot what are now considered his most influential images of ravers at Castlemorton Common in Wiltshire. The 1992 event is widely regarded as the largest illegal rave in British history and prompted the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.
Alan Lodge: Common Grounds: Counterculture & Confrontation Since 1976 runs from September 25 to December 12 at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University. The exhibition will launch the evening before, on Thursday September 24, from 18:00-20:00. Entry is free for all.
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