UK Rave 1991 - Tony Davis

UK Rave 1991 - Tony Davis - Café Royal Books

A zine of photographs documenting the height of the early 90s Rave scene, from the sweaty clubs to the service stations en route.

Tony Davis is a photographer from Nottingham, his work mostly explores rave and football culture.

"I think so in the early days, I was just exploring things to photograph and kept photographing and photographing and photographing. Because I went to college as a mature student, I was pretty driven. They would give us loads of boring studio objects and portraits and pack shots and exercises to do because it was a generic photography course. It wasn't about photojournalism, or reportage, it was just using lots of different photographic equipment, doing lots of units in different areas. All I kept saying is ‘Can I use the darkroom? Can I use the room?’ It almost became more a facility to me than an actual course. I didn't learn that much, a few basics of camera craft and printing stuff and then I was just out doing my own stuff. Even when we were supposed to be doing studio stuff I'd be out doing clubs, raves, football, terraces, whatever, different stuff. I’d already found the way I wanted to be. I'd sit down with the teacher and say this is what I'm doing and they just told me what to fulfill to get the units for the course which I would do but it slowed me down. Portraits of a pair of gloves with roses coming out, it's just not for me all that. Grolsch bottles and jazz album covers specially lit with filters. So I think the rave thing kind of was a little bit of escapism. It got me into places, I was always more of a club person than a festival or rave with 20,000 people in a field. So yeah, I think there was a bit of indulgence and a bit of escapism, but I'd lived a lifetime of clubbing already before then you know, so it wasn't my teens, my youth. You know, it was somebody else's I was kind of looking into."

• 36 pages
• printed in the UK
• staple bound
• 14cm x 20cm

About Café Royal Books:

"Café Royal Books is the idea of Craig Atkinson, an artist and lecturer. Our first title was published in 2005.

Craig wanted to create a way to make artwork accessible to a wider audience. The solution needed to be small, functional, open to collaboration, affordable, and work independently of galleries. These ideas remain at the heart of what we do.

We’re a small family-run publisher based in England, next to the woodland, dunes, and windswept beaches of the North West coast — we’re always inspired by the vastness, calm and energy of this environment. 

We make weekly publications, focussing on documentary photography linked to Britain and Ireland, printed and bound locally by a small 170 year old printing company. Libraries and museums around the world collect the books, so the work will remain preserved and accessible for many years. Our books don’t need batteries, or screens. We hope they will be used, create conversation and be passed down through family generations."

Explore other titles from the Café Royal Books collection.