JJ Waller

Waller grew up in Stoke Newington and Brighton. After leaving school, he trained as a drama teacher and then worked on a community arts project in Liverpool. While in the city he developed a comedy act which he would perform at street parties and events and then developed it to become a street entertainer, at first in London's Covent Garden.[5] Billed as "Captain JJ Waller Unusualist"[6] he became a "leading figure in developing a new wave of street entertainment". [7] The University of Kent's British Comedy Archive includes a JJ Waller Collection, where a flyer describes his act as including "Eating a Live Human Being" and an escapology routine, in which "suspended from the ceiling in a straight jacket singing "My Way" JJ escapes from the jacket and jumps head first into an egg without breaking the yolk." [6] The collection also has a photograph of another act, "'The Bed of Nails' where JJ balanced two London double-decker buses whilst lying on a bed of nails."[6] Waller also features in a podcast from the Comedy Archive, including an interview in which he describes his 1980s performances.[8]

Waller spent most of the 1980s working as an act in comedy clubs. He then joined the French circus Archaos, as front-of-house manager, until the company's tent was destroyed by a gale in Dublin in 1991. [7]

Asked if he missed performance, Waller said, "As a photographer it's quite a crossover – you need to respond to events taking place around you....Sometimes I become like a director working on a performance, getting everyone and everything into place, and then it's lights, cameras, action."[7]

In the 1990s, Waller reinvented himself as a photographer. After taking an evening class in photography, his tutor, Mark Power, suggested that Waller study for a degree in editorial photography at the University of Brighton. After finishing his degree, Waller spent twelve months as Artist in Residence at Gatwick Airport.[9] He then toured the world as assistant to Magnum photographer Paul Lowe. Waller subsequently spent a number of years as a photography producer in the advertising industry.[9]

In 2014, Waller published his first book, JJ Waller's Brighton Volume 1. In his introduction to JJ Waller's Brighton Volume 2, Mark Power wrote that, while Waller revelled in exotic events, such as the Brighton Pride and Naked Bike Ride, "many of the best pictures in this book are of nothing much at all...they are just well seen...Picture after picture provokes a chuckle. Who would have thought the rebuilding of the Seven Dials roundabout could make such a witty picture, so neat and tidy but for the single anarchic orange bollard that's fallen out of line?"[10] Jonathan Meades provided a testimonial for Volume 3: "Waller shows us the horror of Brighton. Not the moral horror of Greene and Hamilton but the aesthetic horror of people desperately having fun: garish, trashy, gross, terminally uncool, and a delight for our basest senses."[3]

In 2007, Waller began to document St Leonards on Sea, looking at its regeneration. He told Sussex Style magazine, "A large part of the project is all about migration, which is at the core of St Leonards...Like most British seaside resorts so much has changed over the years and during the seventies, hotels and buildings were chopped into bedsits and the GLC built homes for 7,000 people to help them migrate to this part of the world."[7]

Apart from his 2014 book, JJ Waller's St. Leonards-on-Sea & Hastings Vol 1, his St Leonards work was produced as wallpaper in a collaboration with artist Deborah Bowness. This work can be seen on permanent exhibition at The Saint Leonard.[9] The Bohemians a series of portraits of people living and working in the area of St Leonards named Bohemia, was exhibited as an installation at the Bohemia club in 2016.[9]

In 2014, Waller was commissioned to document Whitehawk Football Club, when they played their first season in the Conference South. He told Brighton's Viva magazine, "I soon became a fan, and I've been going ever since. While I care passionately about the results, I'm still there to take pictures, and unlike most other football photographers, I'm more interested in the fans than the action....In a way it's like being embedded: people know me so well, they don't notice me."[11]

In 2017, Waller made several trips to Blackpool, which resulted in JJ Waller;'s Blackpool Volume 1. Waller told Lancashire Life that following a commission to spend a week taking photographs in Blackpool, he fell in love with the place.[5] "It's often a case of waiting for something to happen but you don't usually have to wait long in Blackpool - it doesn't usually take long for something interesting to come along. Blackpool is out on a limb but it's a wonderful place. I like places that are on the edge. Blackpool is on the edge geographically, but in other ways as well."[5]

After photographing Blackpool, Waller decided to photograph the British abroad, in Benidorm in Spain. In June 2017, Viva Brighton magazine had a feature on Waller's Benidorm photographs, in which he explained, "It carries on the continuity of the British on holiday. The package holidays of the 60s changed the Brit holiday experience forever. Benidorm seemed the logical place to carry on my picture story...It's like Blackpool with sun. There's a whole area called the British Square that offers loads of picture opportunities."[12]

JJ Waller's Brighton & Hove Albion, 2017, documented the history of the football club. In his introduction, Paul Hodson, author of We Want Falmer, described the book as "a collection of exceptional images from some significant moments since the Goldstone's destruction to the astonishing parade along Brighton and Hove seafront to celebrate the club's Premier League promotion."[13] The back cover carried a testimonial from Dick Knight, widely regarded as saviour of the club, in which he described the pictures as "extraordinary, adding more drama, vision, insight, hope and joy to scenes we've already seen, making us relive them from new perspectives."[13]

In November 2018, Waller documented Bonfire Night across Sussex. Rather than photographing the celebration itself, he made before and after images of the bonfires. He told Viva Lewes, which published a feature on the photos, "I see an intrinsic sculptural beauty in these bonfires. I am fascinated by their transient nature, a form of unremarked folk art. The structures are simple but skilfully assembled. I have great respect for the bonfire captains who make them: creations whose sole destinies are to be reduced to ash. Very often it is the fireworks and effigies that take the public gaze, but the bonfire is at the core of the event."[14] Waller also produced a poster of 32 Sussex bonfires, which came in a facsimile firework tube with a blue touch paper.[15]

Waller regularly photographed his city's Pride festival, which featured in all his Brighton books. In 2018, he decided to publish a separate book on the festival, inspired by that year's Britney Spears concert, a massive ticketed event, attended by 55,000 people.[16] He told Sussex Life magazine that, while photographing the crowds at the show, "I knew I had a story – I had pictures from the early Pride parades up to the present day incarnation.".[17] His 2019 book, JJ Waller's Brighton Pride, included comments from those involved in the festival, both celebratory and critical. Caroline Lucas, Brighton Pavilion's Green MP, said, "Brighton Pride is one of the most important events in the city, and in this book JJ Waller brilliantly captures its spirit – one that is unashamedly bold, full of colour, and one that unites us by celebrating our uniqueness and humanity."[18] There was a quotation from George Montague, aged 96, shown in the book parading under his banner, 'The Oldest Gay in the Village': "Pride does more than anything else to further the acceptance of homosexuality and the understanding of just how many of us there are."[18] Hannah Cowan social anthropologist, was also quoted: "Brighton Pride has been pinkwashed with capitalist sentiments and become an opportunity for business to make money. In doing so they have taken away the meaning of the day, and worked to increase demand through advertising campaigns reminiscent of music festivals."[18]

From March until May 2020, Waller made around 100 informal portraits of people isolated in their homes during the Covid Lockdown. The photographs, taken in Brighton and Hove, St Leonards, Hastings and Firle were almost all shot through windows. His subjects included "a woman holding her newborn baby against the pane of her door, a crouching couple peering out from the front of their house, and an entire family posing in the colours of a local non-league football team."[1] At the beginning of April, Waller told the Guardian, "Since the lockdown started to kick in three weeks ago I have had 24 different invites to homes across Brighton. They saw a post I put up across social media about this project and all are very happy to take part.Technically it is a real challenge because I only get maybe a few minutes to shoot individuals and families who come to the windows or doors. But I am also honoured that I have their trust to do this."[1]

Martin Parr edited a book, JJ Waller's Lockdown: Informal Portraits of this Time, published in September 2020. Parr wrote, "When we look back at the spring and summer of 2020, I think this suit of images will be an iconic memory of this strange time we have all lived through."[19]

The book included text from Jonathan Meades in which he compared the images with a memory of a newborn calf "peering through the semi-transparent foetal membrane at the incomprehensible world it would inhabit....People gazing through translucent but far from transparent glass recall that calf. They are half seeing an uncertain contorted world which they don't fully understand and which they have reason to be fearful of....Waller's photographs show an entire captive nation, not merely a city on its edge."[20]

Waller spent the summer of 2020 taking photographs of the Sussex coast, from Camber Sands in the east to the Witterings in the west. In November, he published a book of his photographs, which were presented as postcards with captions such as 'Play Golf in Sussex', 'Cows of Cuckmere' and 'Singles Sussex'. In the book, Waller explained that the inspiration came from the postcards of John Hinde: "The phrase 'picture postcard perfect' has a resonance for us all. It's not surprising then, albeit with more than a dash of irony, that I chose to present my images from this Sussex journey using the postcard format. There is another reason. I have long been a fan of John Hinde, who like me before becoming a photographer worked in the world of circus and entertainment....His cards had a very recognisable style, vivid garish colours, with everything and everyone perfectly positioned in the frame....This book gives a special nod to Hinde and generations of other seaside photographers."[21]

Michelle Abadie, curator of the John Hinde Collection, was quoted on the back cover: "At last - something good to come out of 2020! Flicking through this book reminded me of the fantastic postcards of 1960s roadside Americana. It shows the extravagant reality of the British seaside and the images are reminiscent of the extraordinary highly coloured world of John Hinde postcards. A joy."[22]

• JJ Waller's Brighton. Vol 1, Curious Publishing, 2012
• JJ Waller's Brighton. Vol 2, Curious Publishing, 2014
• JJ Waller's St. Leonards-on-Sea & Hastings Vol 1, Curious Publishing, 2014
• JJ Waller's Blackpool Vol 1, Curious Publishing, 2017
• JJ Waller's Brighton & Hove Albion, Curious Publishing, 2017
• JJ Waller's Brighton Pride, Curious Publishing, 2019
• JJ Waller's Lockdown-Informal Portraits Of This Time, Curious Publishing, 2020
• JJ Waller's Sussex By The Sea , Curious Publishing, 2020

• Official website