Before mods, rockers, punks, New Romantics and hippies, there was a time when Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls were the dominant style subculture in London and the UK. Back in 1951, a young freelance photographer began capturing the fledgling beginnings of this new style culture. That photographer was Ken Russell who went on to become one of Britain’s most original film directors. Lost and forgotten until they were recently discovered in an archive, Russell’s photographs of the teddy girls and boys were among the first to document the burgeoning scene.
Big quiffs, lapelled top coats and high-cocked collars were key elements of the looks that he found among derelict East-End bombsites, funfairs and clubs. Aged 23 when he began shooting, Russell says of the images that were recently exhibited at The North Wall gallery in Oxford, “No one paid much attention to the teddy girls before I did them, though there was plenty on teddy boys. They were tough, these kids, they’d been born in the war years… they knew their worth. They just wore what they wore.”
All images © Ken Russell / Topfoto.co.uk