An Interview with Documentary Photographer Rebecca Zephyr Thomas on We Are Your Friends 01

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‍Wilden Oche

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We had the opportunity to design a photo zine (magazine) and poster series for the launch of the We Are Your Friends 01 exhibition by London-based social and documentary photographer Rebecca Zephyr Thomas. Thank you for agreeing to answer our questions, Rebecca! Your work is inspiring, and we'd like our audience to get to know you better. Could you tell us what a social and documentary photographer is and what made you choose this photography style?

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Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

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‍A social documentary photographer is a documentary photographer who shoots human social interactions, music festivals or any social gathering rather than highly political situations like war zones for example. I was inspired by the work of Nan Goldin who shot downtown New York in the late seventies and early eighties, when I was shooting the images in the zine, I was really firm about how I wanted to use photography, which was without artifice, so real people caught in real settings, not a studio environment, and using either natural light or hard flash on camera. I loved Hollywood paparazzi shots from the 50s and also the dance floor images caught at Studio 54 so these were influences too, the idea of a glamorous occasion caught in a documentary style, this was possibly a hangover from the grunge movement in the nineties, the idea of raw authenticity.

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Wilden Oche

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We Are Your Friends 01 documents the Underage Festival in London between 2007 and 2008. When we imagine music festivals, we don’t always have a clean perception, as these can be grungy, among many unsettling adjectives. Could you tell us about the Underage Festival and what struck you?

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Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

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It felt very pure, dreamy and sweet. There were hardly any adults allowed to walk around the festival itself, so only people who were directly working would have been allowed, friends of the festival organisers who were over 18 could hang out in the VIP backstage area but not wonder around the festival itself. So I felt very lucky to be able to do both. There was no alcohol for sale apart from in the VIP adult area so the festival was very wholesome in that regard. Obviously, teenagers can be quite hyper—you could feel the energy that they had, the excitement of being there.

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Wilden Oche

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‍You pushed the boundaries by not only engaging us for the design of the magazine but also for the poster series displayed in London. What exactly is We Are Your Friends 01? And what's the vision behind your approach?

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Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

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‍I wanted to get some of my archive work out into the world and share it with people who were at the festival, remember the era of the late 2000s or are just interested in the music and fashion of the time. I wanted a cohesive look to the zine and the posters and Wilden Oche definitely delivered on this, the poster design is striking without taking away from the imagery. One of the first things we worked on was the title logo as this would be on the cover of the zine, on the posters and also extras such as post cards and press releases. I initially wanted something simple based on Barbara Kruger fonts and Wilden Oche developed a logo from this idea, but elevated it further than what I had had in mind!

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Wilden Oche

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‍What camera did you use for documenting the festival? When you consider the years 2007 and 2008 in comparison to our current times, with smartphones and the possibility for anyone to have in their hands the capability to document almost anything at an unparalleled speed, where do you believe the photographer's genius shines? And is it truly about speed?

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Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

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I used an old 1970s Nikomat camera, it’s fully manual on both focus and settings, I think I used an external light meter at the festival too, so each image would have been checked before I shot it, as I didn't want to waste any film! I think shooting the festival this way on 35mm has given the images a more timeless quality than if I’d shot on a little digital camera.

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Wilden Oche

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‍You were born in New Zealand and currently live in London. You've also worked on projects in the US and across Europe. What is distinctive about the creative, especially the photography, scene in London?

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Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

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London is home to cutting edge youth culture, counter cultures and emerging fashion designers, I think London fashion and arts tend to be edgier than in other places. It’s also a melting pot of creativity from around the world and home to some of the most famous art and fashion colleges in the world, all of this adds to the mix of creativity.

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