Here, we republish an essay from Marc Vallée’s latest zine: a reflection upon the lives of Vallée and his art school friends amid the walls of their vibrant east London home
“How does one visually represent a community that has gone through so much?” Asks Marc Vallée. His zine When I Was at Art School in the 90s is documentation of quieter moments of queer youth in the late 90s, but also something more complex. It is Vallée’s response to what came before: a community slowly emerging from the horror of the 80s and early 90s global AIDS epidemic. The pictures, which were shot over one day in 1998 in an east London student house, depict an alternate vibrant world of experimentation inhabited by Vallée, Jamie, and Lloyd — all art students at the Cass School of Art opposite the Whitechapel Gallery.
The work is distinct from the photographs we commonly associate with the epidemic: from melancholy images of hospital wards to the hedonism and joy of the alternative queer club scene spreading across London. Vallée’s intimate frames capture Jamie and Lloyd, lounging, smoking and dressing up in different outfits. A casual yet poignant representation of their lives, straddling fiction and reality. Indeed, beyond the four walls of their dilapidated Stratford house, homophobia continued to rage.
A certain nostalgia imbues the delicate zine: its rich colours and crisp printing reveal the objects that populate the residence and the men’s clothes and haircuts themselves, all of which speak to that period of time. But, more than anything, the work feels honest and candid: a gentle observation of friends and the domestic haven they collectively carved out for themselves.
Below, we republish an essay written by Jamie Atherton, which features in When I Was at Art School in the 90s. Today, Atherton is an artist working with performance, writing, drawing and video. And the founder and editor of Failed States.