If he could pass on one piece of wisdom he’s accrued over greater than three many years of taking pictures, acclaimed photographer Alasdair McLellan would tell his teenage self: “Everyone seems to be just as insecure as you.” Having first picked up a camera aged 13, the primary intentional portrait he ever took may very well be a devastatingly tender embodiment of this sentiment. A teenage boy crouching in a field, half-hidden within the brilliantly green wheat, gazes back toward his friend behind the lens. His face is lit by sunlight and, in all likelihood, he’s touchingly oblivious to his own radiance.

This poignant portrait is the primary picture in Home and Away [designed by M/M (Paris)], the brand new book encompassing work made by McLellan between 1987 and 2022. This debut photograph is the right approach to begin, setting the scene for the trenchant beauty which unfolds over the pages of this two-volume anthology.

Because the shutter click of that first image a few years ago, McLellan’s trajectory as a photographer has seen him shooting for the world’s most illustrious magazines and fashion houses and taking portraits of actual superstars. But his photographs at all times appear to retain the potency and optimism of those early pictures. “His pictures today have modified little; his way of the world is nearly the exact same. The primary picture he ever took looks prefer it might have been captured yesterday,” reads an announcement in regards to the book. “Today, the people may need grown up, but they’re essentially the identical sort of people in Alasdair’s pictures, irrespective of how famous they’re, their age or status. Something of the topic’s 13-year-old self still shines through; there’s something untouched and open about them and there may be at all times springtime light…” 

While Home and Away will not be McLellan’s debut book [he’s already published a string of revered monographs including Ultimate Clothing Company (2013), Ceremony, (2016), The Palace (2017) and Blondey 15-21, (2019)], it’s essentially the most comprehensive and essentially the most autobiographical. Raised in Tickhill, a market town near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, this latest title traces the deeply personal lineage of his distinct aesthetic. In a conversation over email, he tells Dazed: “The entire point of Home and Away was to point out how much my time growing up had influenced my work; not only the photographs I took as a youngster, but in addition the music I used to be listening to or the movies I used to be watching. The realm itself. The sunshine. The intense sunshine or the dark clouds. The pylons. The cooling towers. A haircut my friend may need had.”

The initial impression of those details of his adolescence stays legible throughout. McLellan recalls: “Most of my inspiration from that point got here from record sleeves, the nightclubs, the bars, music videos, school trips, the town centre, the parks we used to spend time in, the continually changing weather, the garments, the trainers and the haircuts all of us wore.” 

Lovingly chronicling and referencing youth culture throughout his profession, the influence of the North is an unintentional yet abiding presence recurring in his work. “I initially solid individuals who looked like my friends in school, or from a movie I liked, or a music video I liked,” he explains. “I never consciously thought the North influenced my work, the inspiration mostly got here from my experiences growing up within the North. I never really got down to have a Northern aesthetic. It just so happens that I’m from there.” 

McLellan tells Dazed: “Mostly I attempt to re-create memories or happenings. There’s something very emotional about memories. So my work mostly comes from that.” On this sense, Home and Away is rather more than the sum of its parts; it’s a set of memories distilled on the pages; souvenirs of long-gone moments which, within the words of Jean Baudrillard simply reveal, “Here, at the moment, at that place, in that light, there was someone…”.

Alasdair McLellan’s Home and Away is on the market for pre-order via M/M (Paris) now. The book can be launching on July 6 at Dover Street Market in London from 6-8pm. 

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