“The Firm” is a seminal series of images (and later book) that was born when Jocelyn Bain Hogg was given an editorial assignment by British Elle to photograph a journalist who was interviewing two known local villains. He got talking to one of the men about the intimacies of the father and son relationship — Bain Hogg’s father was an actor (Tom) and the Villain’s son was also an actor. They bonded over a night of whiskey and conversation in a Soho club.
The anonymous villain was keen to see the shots for the article and Bain Hogg, who realised he had begun to be privy to a secret, private and frightening world, asked if he could photograph them further. He then pitched the idea of a full story to a Japanese journalist he’d been working with – an exclusive document of the British Crime World featured in Japanese GQ. The work for the commission was shot in a month, but Bain Hogg carried on shooting this seedy world for three more years, resulting in the completion of “The Firm”.
Don’t lie — don’t pretend
“The reason the pictures resonate is because I never ever lied to them. I cannot pretend to be from their world; I do not have a cockney accent and actually have no interest at all in British crime histories, and from the start made it clear I didn’t want to photograph their own presentation — no posed pictures and no complicity. From day one I showed them the pictures and continue to do so. This way there can be no arguments and no compromise. I soon realised that they actually enjoy being presented in this hard, real
Jocelyn Bain Hogg
way…”
The prints in the exhibition have been pulled directly from his yellow and black Kodak boxes housing the original works that were undisturbed for decades. Since then, the story has gone from examining negatives to taking on a physical existence as prints. Bain Hogg happens to be a skilled and consummate printer whose prints were mainly used for blue chip publications. They have Jocelyn Bain Hogg’s stamps, signature, and notations on the verso — something which has now become more and more the exception in these days of digital images.
Biography for Jocelyn Bain Hog
Jocelyn Bain Hogg began his career as a unit photographer on film sets after studying documentary photography at Newport Art College. He shot publicity campaigns for the BBC and worked on numerous commercial and editorial assignments, appearing in Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, and The Independent among others. Bain Hogg is the author of seven books to date including The Firm, The Family, Idols + Believers and A British Entertainment which are probably his best known. He is a member of the famed journalistic photo agency VII.
Exhibition dates
The exhibition will run from July 11 to September 3 at Leica Gallery London, 64-66 Duke Street, London, W1K 6JD.
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