Northern Soul revived: Elaine Constantine’s photographic journey into a British subculture

In a new exhibition and book, the photographer presents her fascinating document of the northern soul scene of the 1990s, revealing its extreme aerobics and unstoppable energy.

If it weren’t for Northern Soul, my husband would never have been born. I have a lot to thank for this unique cultural genre, born out of Northern England and the Midlands in the early 1970s. It developed from the mod scene of the previous decade and was based on a particular style of Motown soul music that enjoyed a fast tempo and a specific dance style.

It was a serious business. People wore button-down Ben Sherman shirts, blazers with centre vents, and classic brogues. It all began in the Twisted Wheel in Manchester before quickly spreading to other nightclubs and dance halls, such as the Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca, and the Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, where my in-laws first met.

You had to have stamina and athleticism to hold the beat, with many classic moves later resembling disco and breakdancing. There were spins, flips, backdrops, and even karate kicks. Rather astonishingly, there was nothing like it elsewhere. As such, it’s drawn something of a cult following since those early years. In many spots, the northern soul scene very much rages on.

It was something photographer Elaine Constantine documented in the 1990s when she made London her new home. Moving from Manchester for her photography career, she’d been commissioned by The Face magazine to capture the northern soul scene at local nightclubs. Beginning at the 100 Club, where they played rare American grooves from the ’60s and ’70s all through the night, Constantine – who was familiar with the genre – was curious to see how it had evolved.

“I remember going down those stairs into that dark basement and seeing those shadowy figures moving energetically in sync with each other,” she says. “It all came back to me in an instant and made me slightly hesitant. It was obvious the scene had gone further underground, the crowd older, little new blood, the records more obscure and the attitude on the dance floor as fierce as ever.”

Constantine wondered if she could really take pictures in that place. “As I suspected it would, the blast from my first flash altered the atmosphere,” she continues. “I braved it to shoot a few more from different angles, but things felt worse with each blinding shot. The relief I felt when I heard the familiar opening bars of ‘This Won’t Change’ by Lester Tipton – a fast, raw, jerky, yet tender sound. I pushed the camera bag under a chair and got lost dancing in the shadows until morning. The feeling of being some kind of culture vulture left me gradually with each record.”

She soon became a regular again and travelled to venues nationwide, photographing at many of the all-nighters. She wanted to create a document of the scene, so it wouldn’t ever be forgotten. But when she looked through her pics, she felt they lacked something. Those packed-out dance floors she’d enjoyed frequenting aged 16 were far less populated, and the extreme aerobics and unstoppable energy of youth en-masse had been replaced by a handful of 30 to 40-year-olds. It was then that she decided to depict the movement as a “fictional film set in its heyday”.

In 2015, her film Northern Soul was nominated for BAFTA’s Outstanding Debut award, The London Critics Circle Breakthrough Filmmaker award and won the NME’s Award for Film of The Year. The original images, meanwhile, were relegated to her archive and not seen again. Until now, that is.

Revisiting the original photographs, Constantine realised their worth. “The images made in the 1990s were forgotten about, and it wasn’t until I showed them to Martin Parr recently that I realised they did have atmosphere and that the ritualised aerobic pleasure they depicted, kept alive by a dwindling hardcore, were worthy subject matter in their own right,” she says.

As such, her photo series is the subject of a new book published by RRB Photobooks and an exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation. The photographs, many seen here for the first time, were taken in venues including Manchester’s Ritz and London’s 100 Club, alongside other random venues, like a lad called Steve’s kitchen.

Of the work, Martin Parr says, “They really show the unadulterated energy and joy of dancing to northern soul. How they maintain the stamina to go all night is beyond me. Elaine unwittingly produced a valuable document of a uniquely British subculture, where music, dance and style collide.”

Born in Bury, UK, in 1965, Elaine Constantine first began taking photographs of her friends hanging around the northern soul and scooter scenes across the UK. After working as a photographic technician in Manchester, she moved to London and became a freelance photographer, regularly contributing to The Face and later on to W and Italian Vogue, amongst others. Constantine received a John Kobal Foundation Award in 1998 and the Royal Photographic Society’s Terrence Donovan Achievement Award in 2006.