Perry Ogden: Shooting stars

The project came about when Daniel Kearns, the creative director of Kent & Curwen, contacted me on Instagram and asked if I would be interested in collaborating. I was familiar with the brand, so I met with Daniel and he talked about some ideas, referencing some of my previous work such as my book Pony Kids and images of Francis Bacon's studio.

Out of this came the idea of preparation – and particularly what people go through to prepare. We started talking about sportsmen, boxers, musicians and artists. And of course, the killer issue was that we then had to look at the clothes and see how we could make it work. He had a lot of the new collection there, and we were working with a wonderful stylist called Alister Mackie, so it all just started coming together. Every element is so important when you go into making a picture, particularly when ultimately it's going to be a fashion picture. Every little detail has to work.

One of the places we were looking at was boxing clubs, and we came across Repton Boxing Club in Bethnal Green. We got drawn into it because of the history, and when I went there they were in the middle of a session. I think it was purpose-built as a gym in the 1880s and it hasn’t changed much. It's all original brickwork, so the interior is really inspiring. The people there are lovely and just said, 'Go ahead, you can do this. If you want to cast these guys, they come between 6 and 8 o'clock on Wednesdays.' We ended up casting some of the people from the gym, alongside others we found elsewhere.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Five of the guys in the pictures knew each other really well, and were great at bringing in the others because I made a couple of them the coaches for the day – some were a little intimidated as they had never boxed before. It was cold and I wanted them to do a proper training session so that they actually warmed up before we took the photos.

It reminded me a little of my childhood, wanting to be a footballer and growing up in Islington and Clerkenwell around a mix of people from different backgrounds. It was these kinds of things we could draw on when pulling together these different tribes into one cohesive image.

PERRY OGDEN is a British photographer whose images have appeared in magazines including Italian Vogue, W, The Face and Arena; he has also shot numerous advertising campaigns. Most recently he has collaborated with menswear brand Kent & Curwen on a photo series documenting young boxers in Bethnal Green and footballers on Hackney Marshes; kentandcurwen.com