Hoppy: Against Tyranny
Words by Sophie Eggleton
In one of London’s coolest spaces , located a short walk from Old Street/Liverpool St stations Ideas Generation have put on another fascinating exhibition. For those with an interest in history, music, popular culture, politics, rebellion or merely black and white imagery this is the exhibition for you. Displayed is a vast collection of many unseen images and paraphernalia by ‘veteran activist and revolutionary’, former freelance music photographer, and scientist, John Hopkins, known by most, affectionally and respectfully, as Hoppy.
I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing to have experienced the 60’s first hand. Films’ interpretations and their attempts to transport us back often depict the liberating aspects of the ’swinging sixties’- free love , hedonism and vibrant fashion . But as many of the exhibitions images reveal, it was not entirely about reveling in the music revolution. There were financial (see dole queue image) and political struggles, naive and unfair rules and opinions, which if broken or opposed would equal unfair or harsh consequences. Luckily there was an army of people who were determined to challenge, urgently striving for change.....
Hoppy was not another student following his lifelong dream, his story is far more interesting. In 1959 as part of the Cheltenham Youth Campaign for nuclear disarmament he drove a funeral hearse to Moscow to protest against ‘the bomb’. In the end Hoppy was thrown out of Russia for breaking the terms of his visa by leaving his traveling party. He had been teaching himself to take photos so upon his returned to London he sent pictures to the Guardian, they reacted positively and sent a cheque which spurred him to move to the big smoke indefinitely and try and make a living from his new found flair.Many of the images featured were not merely captured by Hoppy by coincidence, nor by purposefully being in the right place at the right time, some of the events themselves were a result of Hoppy’s actions and words, thus the importance of the man and his work can’t be overstated.
To pick favourite images from the selection is near impossible as they all hold some impact whether it be for aesthetic beauty, historical importance , or capturing a joyful or poignant moment in time. As a style icon of mine the image of a fresh Marianne Faithful , clear skinned, with beautiful plump lips and staring right at us stands out as a vision of beauty. The Jazz images, situated on the stairs of the space, starring the likes of legends Louis Armstrong and Lee Morgan, are stunning. There’s something visually striking about how the camera flash enhances the gleam of the brass of the trumpets and saxophones, the contrast of the black and white suits and the smoke of the cigarettes withering into the atmosphere of the captured venues transport you to that moment..... and how lovely that would be .
The shots which stir you are those which capture normal folk in moments of intimate interactions, such as the couple embracing at the station the early hours , and the gaggle dancing the night away in Kingston. The images of anarchy and revolt remind of the hardships of the times - perhaps as we consider our own current position things aren’t so different now!
Alongside the photographs and newspaper clippings including front pages of the International Times, the publication he co founded whose contributers included Germaine Greer, are posters from The UFO Club. The venue, located on Tottenham Court Road and founded by Hoppy and Joe Boyd in a former irish dancehall called the ‘Blarney Club” opened for the first time in 1966. Unsure of how successful this venture would be , but knowing that they wanted to make some cash, they were to greeted with an accepting crowd and importantly a profit, “freaks came out of the woodwork from all over the city , said Boyd.
Pink Floyd were booked for the first two Fridays, and then taken on again as the club carried on into 1967 .Their run was short though, as their fame grew they were able and wanted to player bigger venues, who inevitably payed better. Initial events combined live music with light shows, avant garde films and slide shows, dance troupes. The new house band was to be Soft Machine , other bands performing included The incredible String Band, Arthur Brown, and Procol Harem, who played there when classic ‘Whiter shade of Pale’ was No 1 in the charts. The UFO Club’s became so popular it was unable to accommodate its ever increasing number of attendees. It all came to an head in in June 1967, when Hopkins was imprisoned for drug offenses. Police pressure on the club increased in the following weeks, and the landlords revoked the lease. The club moved into The Roundhouse , despite its shabby state the rent was extortionate therefore they generally lost money, which sadly resulted in closure In October 1967. The posters featured remind us of the beauty of old techniques, before digital art and over saturation of photoshop tools.
Hoppy was not another student following his lifelong dream, his story is far more interesting. In 1959 as part of the Cheltenham Youth Campaign for nuclear disarmament he drove a funeral hearse to Moscow to protest against ‘the bomb’. In the end Hoppy was thrown out of Russia for breaking the terms of his visa by leaving his traveling party. He had been teaching himself to take photos so when he returned to London he sent pictures to the Guardian, they reacted positively and sent a cheque which spurred him to move to the big smoke and try to make a living from it.
As well as his creative and political side, there is also another dimension to the man. Evening classes in botany and biochemistry led to a part-time job with the University of Westminster as a “plant tissue culture consultant”, which he held until recently. He has also combined this with his former life, developing close-up camera techniques to allow him to trace changes in plant tissue growth. He currently spends a lot of his time searching for the funding to restore and digitalise his video archives, as well as managing his photographs from the Sixties.
We caught up with him, to pick his brain:
DH: Many of the images in the show have never been seen before, so why now?
JH: This was the first opportunity. Each curator has different preferences, Eloise’s choice has less music than others, and more documentary.
You were previously a scientist, did you always have a flair for photography or was it a chance discovery?
Photography woke up the right brain = intuitive/art, while the technicalities occupied the left brain = scientific. But music was there all along,in the heart.
Does your science background gift you with anything that helps you with your photography?
Yes the idea that phenomena are analyzable, cause/effect, nowadays the artist has to be able to think straight on many levels.i.e.
Level A = technicalities
Level B = aesthetics
Level C = effect in the world, meaning
Who inspired you? Which photographers today impress you?
Then: Tony Armstrong-Jones, John Bulmer, Bill Brandt, Cartier-Bresson, David Bailey, Edward Piper (nudes).
Now: Rankin, Gered Mankowitz, Mick Rock
How did you get your positions at the likes of Melody Maker ?
I never had a” position”, I was a freelance. Melody Maker sent a staff snapper on tour with the Beatles but due to the size of the stages couldn’t get a single shot of the Fab Four playing together. In desperation they hired a studio and called me in. It took all of 5 minutes to stand them in a corner and pretend to play, have a laugh and go home. After that, MM gave me regular work but they were mean as hell when it came to money.
Did you enjoy the traveling aspect of your job as music photographer, was it as exciting as you’d imagine or did you ever crave a normal 9-5?
I freelanced in different subject areas for different media. Sunday Times would send me up in aerobatic displays and hovercraft demonstrations, the Observer sent me on political stories. You had to be ready to travel at a moments notice, stay relaxed till the moment came for fast action, work really hard for a few minutes, then get the exposed films back to head office as fast as possible & wait till the dripping contacts could be viewed at the picture desk so you could identify who was in the pix. I had a mini and a scooter and there were no meter maids The music was great..
What were your intentions when starting International Times, how did you go about starting a newspaper?
Filling the vacuum left by the straight press of the day which didn’t cover a lot of stuff going on - openings, happenings, drug news, peace and protest, avant garde of all kinds, free love, jazz & poetry, experimentation across a wide cultural front, censorshit, arts laboratories - a raft of stuff later labelled “underground”, and later “counterculture”.
Pink Floyd was your house band, what were they like to work with in the early days?
Easy going.
Did you think they’d be as huge as they became?
No idea. At that time my event horizon was about 4 weeks.
·Are you still on contact with the bands you worked with ?
Occasionally.
You took portraits of leading figures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Allen Ginsberg- can you give us an insight into what they were like as people?
For MX & MLK, a few shots on a long lens across a room with bounce flash produced close-ups. These are described as portraits but not in the sense that (to cite the other extreme) Karsh of Ottawa would have portrait sittings, and as for knowing what they were like as people, I have no idea. People frequently ask such questions but they are based on a set of assumptions that are interesting in themselves, to do with the intimacy that a close-up may imply but not actually have happened.
For Allen, I got to know him a bit as he was good friends of friends, and he visited me in jail where he freaked out the screws & inmates alike by chanting mantras and playing finger cymbals in the visiting room. He was a mensch with plenty of chutzpah. A few years later I videoed him performing Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience somewhere in Berkeley.
You photographed iconic bands that really sum up an era, do you still feel there bands around that will have that iconic status when we look back in years to come?
I guess so, in the direction of world music, but I have no idea who, there are so many choices.
What do you think makes a successful image?
It depends on the context, what is the intention and to what extent it is fulfilled.
Are you views still the same? If you were prime minister what changes would you make?
I would resign immediately after burning down the Houses of Parliament and destroying as many laws as possible, legalize all drugs, withdraw the army from Afghanistan, buy all the heroin they can produce and redistribute it to counteract the world shortage, and start an alternative Olympic Games with no drug testing.Cyberneticians needed to join up the dots and restructure the political and financial management. Research and manufacture portable decentralized power generators, and make all contraception free. And so on.
Seriously, there is a titanic struggle going on between the forces of repression represented by the totalitarian state called UK which behaves as if it owns the citizens and all their information, and the free peoples of the world for whom government should be the servant not the master, the facilitator and not the censor.
What would you say to those that choose not to vote?
As someone who takes photographs of various people and scenes that
make up contemporary culture are you ever able to switch off or are
you consistently observing and thinking about what would make a great
image?
I gave up photography as a profession in 1966, then did video for about
25 years. The world is de-light-full in all its glory.
Hoppy: Against Tyranny, at the Idea Generation Gallery, 19th June – 19th July, http://www.ideageneration.co.uk
Posted Mon, June 29, 2009