These Photos Offer A Real Look At The Lives Of British Skinheads

Derek Ridgers' collection of skinhead photos captures youth culture gone mad.

In the late 70s, British photographer Derek Ridgers began hanging around with the skinheads in London's Shoreditch neighborhood.

Derek Ridgers

Rising out of a subsect of punk rock, skinheads were known for their distinctive style, brash attitudes, and propensity for violence.

Derek Ridgers

But Ridgers told BuzzFeed Life that in the time he spent documenting their scene, he never felt threatened.

Derek Ridgers

"The skinheads could be a little intimidating if there was a whole bunch of them and they’d been drinking," he said. "But no more so than a lot of other young people and less so than some."

Derek Ridgers

Many skins were aligned with the right wing National Front party, which rose to prominence in the mid-70s.

Derek Ridgers

The National Front was far-right, anti-immigrant and pro-white, and, not surprisingly, linked to the neo-Nazi movement.

Often from a working class background, young skins took up the mantle of racist, far-right politics as a means of gaining personal power.

Derek Ridgers

But just as many skins had no affiliation with the NF—or its racist, xenophobic beliefs.

Derek Ridgers

As Guardian writer Sean Hagen explains, skinheads of color "tended to belong to the more style-conscious tribe that also congregated around 2-Tone, taking their sartorial cue from the original post-Mod skinhead era of the late-60s, where attention to detail – Crombie, Ben Sherman, cropped jeans, brogues, red socks and matching handkerchief – was all."

Ridgers admitted that he was drawn to the skinheads in part because of how photogenic they were.

Derek Ridgers

"Among them were some undeniably beautiful and memorable faces, some of the best faces I've ever photographed," he said.

Derek Ridgers

Ridgers also had a personal stake: In the '60s he'd been a part of the skinhead scene, too.

Derek Ridgers

But, he says, back then, "being a skinhead seemed to me to be all about the haircut, the clothes, the music, the girls and the fighting."

Derek Ridgers

"If anything, it seemed to me that black and Afro-Carribean culture was very much admired by the skinheads of my teen years," he said. "I soon found out that this wasn't the case with the late '70s skinheads."

Derek Ridgers

Derek Ridgers

The girls of the group — known as skinbirds – also posed for Ridgers' camera, sporting a feminine variation on the skinhead buzzcut.

Derek Ridgers

Derek Ridgers

Derek Ridgers

Derek Ridgers

You can catch more photographs from Ridgers' exhaustive chronicling in the book Skinheads: 1979-1984.

Derek Ridgers