Beautiful Portraits of East London Boxers

Perry Ogden is best known for Pony Kids (1999), a collection of formal portraits of Dublin teenagers with their ponies, which provides an amazing insight into the city’s suburban horse culture. But Ogden has spent the last 20 years documenting different aspects of British culture and, in a new collaboration with British heritage brand Kent & Curwen, has turned his lens on Repton Boys Club, an amateur boxing club based in Bethnal Green. His images, which can be viewed in the gallery below, are part of a wider project titled ‘The Boxer, The Artist and The Musician’, focussing on real men and the rituals and routines they perform before undertaking their discipline. “[Perry] has been a personal influence for years, ever since I first saw his Pony Kids book,” says Kent & Curwen’s Creative Director Daniel Kearns. “Growing up in Dublin it really resonated with me, how true and yet romantic it was as a portrayal. As I approached this [project], Perry was the obvious choice to capture the melting pot that London represents for Kent & Curwen.” Here, alongside Ogden’s images, the photographer discusses the shoot.

“Daniel showed me the moodboards for the collection and some of them featured my work: pictures from Pony Kids, of Francis Bacon’s studio and of traveller kids, that kind of thing alongside pictures of Bacon and Freud by John Deakin, film stills from early Ken Loach films. He talked about boxers, musicians and artists and the idea of preparation, the importance of preparation. He had a strong, clear vision but ultimately he wanted to create something new.

[The people playing football are] mainly young guys from Repton Boxing Club in Bethnal Green along with other guys we cast, including the young actor Hero Tiffin Fiennes and two young guys I know from Ireland that I brought over for the shoot, Paddy and Liam. I think they were challenging the boxers to some bare knuckle fighting! It was a really great group of guys and a really good mix of ethnicities. It felt very modern. I love that about London. To me it feels like the most multicultural city in the world.

There are so many images I like but I guess the group shot at Hackney marshes with Hero sitting on the bent cross bar stands out for me. I hadn’t been to Hackney marshes for 20 years so I went to recce and thought it was perfect. On the recce I didn’t look too closely, it just felt good. Then when we went back to shoot – on a very cold day in December – I strode out across the pitches and found myself looking at this wonderful bent goal post. Just perfect. When that happens you know that it’s all going well.”