Putting the bold in Bold Street
‘My true love is people. Photography is just a good bonus’
By Shannon Keating
When he was a little boy, Dave Knight was incredibly shy. He had a stutter. “All I wanted to do was blend in,” he tells me.
Now a photographer known as Bold Street Guy — he has a popular Instagram account under that name, with nearly 14,000 followers, where he posts portraits of mostly alternative types on the famous Liverpool thoroughfare — Dave thinks that, as a young person, “I probably wasn’t brave enough to be different.” He remembers one of his peers in the 70s dressing like a teddy boy, and sticking with the flamboyant style well into adulthood. “I just wanted to go with the flow, and blend in, and not be different,” he says. “But this guy stuck with it. When you get older, you kind of realise how…I mean, I realised I was kind of like the boring and silly one. That guy stuck with it his whole life, and how great is that.”
Now, Dave gets “fantastic inspiration” from people with eccentric styles he sees out and about, who are “far braver than I ever was.” He’ll stop people on Bold Street with striking goth makeup (pure white face, black lipstick, heavy black eyeshadow); tattooed punks in studded collars and leather jackets; Gen Zers dressed head to toe in colourful clashing-pattern vintage finds from the 70s and 80s. Every chance he gets, on most weekends, both Saturdays and Sundays, Dave will be wandering up and down Bold Street, searching for his next subject.
He was born here in the city, in 1960, before his mother and father moved their family to Ellesmere Port, where he’s remained ever since. When he was eight, nine, ten years old, he’d draw and paint. His craftiness took a back seat for a few years once he turned 14 and “discovered beer for the first time,” but by 17 he realised he was spending pretty much all his cash on drink, and he considered putting his hard-earned pennies to better use. That was when he got his first camera, in 1977; he turned his mother’s kitchen into a darkroom, developing film at three in the morning, having blacked out the windows as best he could. Almost 50 years later, photography is still his greatest love.
One of his earliest and greatest influences was the photojournalist Don McCullin, best known for his war photography as well as documenting the more marginalised figures of urban society. Dave took his cue from Don, and he started photographing the backstreets of Liverpool in the late 70s and early 80s: homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics, anybody hanging about. Did Dave himself ever want to capture the front lines? He did imagine it in the early days — getting “gritty, hard-hitting” photography of men off at war. But in the end, he stuck closer to home, dabbling in wedding and family photography, though he quickly got bored of trying to wrangle people’s pets – and even worse, people’s dads, most of whom “would unfortunately rather be sat in a dentist chair” than in front of his camera.
“I realised it becomes quite a different dynamic when you’re doing it on deadline, or doing it for money,” he says. Now he works a day job, while photography is his hobby; “I’m happier that way, doing exactly what I want to do.”
‘I’m happier that way, doing exactly what I want to do’
Bold Street, though it’s grown more commercialised over the years, makes natural sense as the backdrop for the kinds of portraits Dave likes taking, since the still-existing vintage shops, cafes and hippie haunts whose incense you can smell from the street draws thousands of interesting characters. “When I go out onto the street, I really have no idea what’s going to happen,” he says. “Over the last few years I’ve met some amazing people, and I’ve made a lot of new friends.” He’s frequently recognized by admirers of his work, many of whom will stand idly by or mill about in hopes that he’ll ask them to take their photo. When he gets home at the end of another long day shooting, his wife Jane will often ask him, “Did you meet any of your fans today?”
‘When I go out onto the street, I really have no idea what’s going to happen’
Once, someone whose photo Dave took messaged him on Instagram later that afternoon. “They said they’d been struggling. They’d been having a tough time over the last few weeks. Confidence issues. They said to me, ‘You have no idea what you stopping me did for me today. I was on a high all day, absolutely buzzing.’ That means a lot, when you get lovely comments like that. It means a lot to me.”
When it comes to his process – getting the shot – “I’ve never been one of those photographers who will steal a photograph,” he says. Meaning, he’ll never just take a sneaky shot of someone anonymously. “I always approach people, and most of them will say yes. I’ll give them my card with contact details, show them my Instagram page.” He’ll tell his subjects to look at the camera “exactly how we’re looking at each other now – straight through the camera.” Typically he’ll take anywhere from three to five photos to a couple dozen. Almost always, interestingly, he’ll end up choosing one of the earliest shots, “if not the very first photograph I take.” Presumably that’s when people are at their most natural – their most themselves – before becoming self-conscious about posing for a photo.
When most photographers are asked about their favourite photos they’ve taken, Dave says, the “stock reply is ‘it’s the next one’. But for me, it’s the one I’ve just taken. The last one I’ve worked on. I’m always excited to come home” and look through the day’s selects, choosing a few to edit, and finally the ones to post to his page.
For Dave, “My true love is people,” he says. That’s the whole name of the game – the reason why he does what he does. “Photography is just a good bonus.”
Check out more of Dave’s photography on Instagram at @bold_street_guy.
We met Bold Street Guy in a completely different (day job) context a few years ago, and have been following him ever since on Instagram, but have never seen him on Bold Street. Doing what he does takes courage, just a different type of courage from the people he photographs.
Time for an exhibition at the Walker, or Bluecoat don't you think?
Nice article....no pic of Dave himself though?