MANCHESTER REIGNS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN CUMMINS

An exhibition of photographs taken from 1979 – 1994 

Mezzanine Gallery,

Royal Exchange Theatre,

St Ann’s Square, 

Manchester, 

M2 7DH 

Friday 24 January – Saturday 22 February 

Monday – Friday, 9.30am – 7.30pm

Saturdays, 9.30am - 8.00pm

Sunday, 11.00am - 5.00pm 

FREE ADMISSION                                                  Bernard Sumner  (New Order) 

MANCHESTER REIGNS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN CUMMINS will include portraits of Morrissey, Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays as well as shots of iconic Manchester architecture, such as Hulme Crescent and the Hacienda.   

The free exhibition runs at the Exchange’s Mezzanine Gallery from Friday 24 January to Saturday 22 February - alongside the Exchange’s world premiere production of BLINDSIDED by Simon Stephens, for which Kevin has produced the poster image and shot rehearsal and production photos. 

One of the world’s most venerated music and portrait photographers, he was described by The New Statesman has having ‘almost singlehandedly created the iconography of modern Manchester.’  

After studying photography in Salford, he embarked on a career that was to encompass a wide range of photographic work. The burgeoning punk scene in Manchester dominated his early work and he quickly became one of the premier documentary photographers of the era.                                                                                                                                   

 He was instrumental in establishing City Life, Manchester’s ‘what’s on’ guide and was a founding contributor to The Face, the influential style magazine where he won an award for Magazine Cover of the Year. 

He spent 10 years as the chief photographer for New Musical Express – the world’s biggest selling rock weekly – where his award-winning pictures were a major contributing factor in the rise of the Madchester and Cool Britannia scenes.

In 1987, Kevin was commissioned by Salford City Art Gallery to photograph 40 famous Salfordians to celebrate the LS Lowry centenary. His personal choice included: Sir Alistair Cooke, Albert Finney, Tony Wilson, John Virgo, John Cooper Clarke, Happy Mondays and Graham Nash.  He was subsequently short-listed for one of the premier photographic honours –the Fox Talbot award.  

His work has appeared in the National Portrait Gallery, and formed a large part of the NME and Q magazine’s ’50 Best Rock Images of all time’. His monograph MANCHESTER: LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT THROUGH THE POURING RAIN was published by Faber and Faber in 2009.

Kevin is currently working on: a Manic Street Preachers book for publication soon, a New Order monograph for Rizzoli (NY) 2014 and a major retrospective in Buenos Aires in March this year.

His career also included regular work as a production photographer for the Royal Exchange between 1977 and 1987. As well as BLINDSIDED, he also recently worked with RET Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom on THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY as part of the 2013 Manchester International Festival.  

A devastating play about families, obsessive love and betrayal, the drama of BLINDSIDED centres on a girl growing up in a battered part of Stockport in a battered time at the end of the seventies. She falls in love with the man who will break her heart into a thousand pieces.   

The production runs from Thursday 23 January to Saturday 15 February 2014 and stars Julie Hesmondhalgh - best known for her long-running stint as Hayley Cropper in CORONATION STREET.