Hello, I Love You

The new IDEA book about to drop is HELLO, I LOVE YOU by Derek Ridgers. (Vouge.com call IDEA the coolest publisher in the world - and Ridgers is similarly celebrated as a photographer expert in capturing subculture and style tribes.)

The famed British press, street and nightlife photographer has deep-dived into his archive to pull out the most amazing pictures of couples kissing, canoodling, snogging and generally getting off with each other. Originally self-published in 3 very limited-edition and very much sold-out zines, IDEA has now wrapped it all up, bound with a beautiful obi band and created the ultimate gift of a book for the Holiday season (aka Christmas).

Ridgers explains: “Public displays of affection were never really my thing. The last time I remember rolling about on the floor with someone was at The Roundhouse when I was seventeen. Yet my archive is full of photographs of stolen moments: punks and metalheads kissing on the street in the 70s, skinheads and mods smooching in clubs in the 80s, ravers and hippies snogging at festivals in the 90s.

"These days, it’s different. Everyone’s got an iPhone and there’s no such thing as a private moment in public anymore.”

From the bars of Soho to the streets of Chelsea, Ridgers has been there with his camera. He would ask permission whenever he could (and apparently no one ever refused) – but most couples had more important things on their mind.

Ridgers - the quiet romantic behind some of London’s loudest scenes - has drawn on his vast archive and held up a lens to what lies behind the studs, shaved heads, mohawks and leather: Something softer. More surprising. Deeply human.

This new release is arguably a tender counterpoint to his reputation as the master documenter of subcultural grit.

Ridgers career is well-known: trained in graphic design, worked in advertising, then picked up a camera and immersed himself in the chaos of Britain’s subcultures beginning in the 1970s . From The Roxy to Blitz to the festival fields of the 90s, he became what many regard as “the foremost visual documenter of London’s style culture” .

On pavements and club floors. In the corner of a bar. Beneath neon lights. In the middle of a crowd. In a moment that probably lasted only seconds - with 'Hello, I Love You', Ridgers has caught, with flash firing - something that may have quickly dissolved back into the night.

Ridgers’s nightlife photography has always been geographically specific: Soho, King’s Road, Camden, Chelsea, but the scenes are universal. These places were the breeding grounds of new identities - and, as HELLO, I LOVE YOU reveals, the sites of countless romantic collisions.

In a 2013 reflection on one of his early photographs of a kissing couple, Ridgers described how he moved through London clubs in the late 70s and early 80s, observing rather than orchestrating: “I always tried to make my subjects look good, but I didn’t want to interfere with whatever they were doing” . What results is not spectacle but sincerity.

What makes this book feel so timely is its contrast with now. It is A love letter to an unguarded era.

We live in a world saturated with cameras. The couple kissing on the club floor today is probably being filmed from six different angles, with someone already planning the right caption. Ridgers’s archive predates that self-consciousness.

These are unposed moments. Unrepeatable flashes. Tiny rebellions against loneliness, against the night, against the world. IDEA’s book doesn’t just preserve them - it celebrates them.

IDEA, the cult fashion-art-photobook publisher, is known for transforming hidden archives into beautifully produced objects. HELLO, I LOVE YOU follows that tradition, with this tight edit that keeps the focus on the couples - a binding that elevates the original zines into a cohesive work - and a Japanese-inspired obi band giving the book a tactile finish that makes it the kind of book destined to sit open on a coffee table way beyond the approaching season.

For MagNorth’s readers - many of whom understand subculture not as costume but as lived environment - HELLO, I LOVE YOU is more than a photobook.

It’s social history.
It’s anthropology.
It’s the emotional undercurrent of Britain’s nightlife.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a reminder that behind every style revolution, there are human beings simply trying to connect.

HELLO, I LOVE YOU is a book about intimacy, but also about time - the years Ridgers spent moving through scenes that have since vanished; the moments that passed too quickly for the lovers involved but were preserved by a flash burst; the eras before constant documentation.

It is a book about love, but also about looking closely. IDEA gives us a reason to do just that.