Guest Lecturer - Dean Chalkley

Southend born, Dean started out life wanting to be a fashion designer, and did a youth training scheme to gain experience in this field. However at an evening class he was told he had very good potential to become a photographer and he decided to follow this new passion.

He urged us to never put anything off. If we want to photograph something, to capture it now; “the only thing we can guarantee is that everything will change”.

He urged us to photograph whatever we want to, to photograph what we like and what we enjoy. Dean himself is not a music photographer, but he does a lot of music, because that is what he enjoys.

Recent exhibition which was a 10-week residency in the prestigious Terrace Galleries at Somerset House during the summer months of 2014 titled return of the rude boy. It embodied 60 images documenting what it is like to be a 'rude boy' in the 21st century. He highlighted that this series was not fashion but cultural, no one was styled. The met them and asked them to go somewhere on the day of shooting dressed in something which they would like to be photographed in. They were all shot in London despite several of them living overseas. Its main message concerned disaffected youth.