Way back when in my early teens when I started getting into ‘alternative’ music I used to read the NME and Melody Maker religiously every week. Something that has always been a key factor for me has been the visuals that musicians use to represent themselves.
Not saying that I’ll like a band just because they have a good album cover despite dreadful music – rather that good design and art direction can hugely boost the enjoyment of an artist.
Being an early teen it was also about identity forming, it helped make bold statements about myself wearing band t-shirts, covering my bedroom wall and schoolbooks with stickers, magazine cut outs, and any other band related paraphernalia.

Steve Gullick was a regular photographer for NME and Melody Maker who, along with Nick Knight, Anton Corbijn, and Stephen Sweet, started to get me really interested in photography as a medium. He is probably most well know for his images of artists such as Nirvana, Nick Cave, and Bjork from the mid-1990′s.
He has continued to be a massive influence on me over the years – especially as he strictly works with film and does all his own printing. As a fully trained colour hand printer I am so in awe of his abilities in the darkroom, and he influenced a lot of my early experiments with an enlarger.
In a world of retouching gone mad he shows that a well taken photograph treated properly with traditional post-production techniques is still a valid commodity. I’d also argue having worked as a retoucher and seen the amount of money spent getting a poor photograph to look anything like a finished product that he is probably more cost effective!
I’m going to end with one of his photos of Kurt Cobain that although not as ‘creative’ as some of his work, is still one of the most iconic images of the Nirvana front man and one that brings back such evocative memories of lying on my bed gazing up at my heroes pasted to my bedroom wall.