He spent a year digitising each photograph before he began sharing them online via an Instagram page, which now has more than 4,000 followers. While he carried on working as a teacher, the negatives of Stuart’s photos remained untouched on his bookshelf for 30 years - until last year. “As the scene got older, so did I, so when it changed, that’s when I decided to jack it in.” “I got to the point where I couldn’t go away and write about it anymore because I just wasn’t comfortable and didn’t really agree with the way things were going. “My job was always to write about things how I saw it and how I experienced it,” Stuart says. The late nights and early mornings eventually started to get to Stuart and, after ten years, he decided it was time to stop. He says: “One night I had to do a double-header where I went to Garlands in Liverpool and then had to head to Manchester to cover a club night that didn’t open until 2am - all bearing in mind I had class at 9am.” “To avoid any conflict at college, I always used my middle name Linden for the photography and review work because I never used that at work so it never clashed.Īs the scene started to get bigger, so did Stuart’s responsibilities. I got through the day and then I went to sleep.
“I’d get home at like four o’clock in the morning, catch a couple hour’s sleep and then be in class for 9AM. “I’d finish work in the afternoon, get the cameras dusted off and then head off to Birmingham. “It’s not something I could do now - I was young back then and I had the energy to do it!,” he explains. While his second career was never hidden from his colleagues, Stuart said the role became more frequent and required him to travel across the north on a regular basis. They weren’t advertorial, it was just as I saw it.” “My job was to go take photographs and write a review.
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“I thought, why not - it was free nights out and I got to cover the north, from Birmingham to Newcastle, as part of the job. “I got talking to a friend in Leeds called Terry George at the time and he mentioned he wanted to start a new free gay magazine called All Points North and asked if I’d like to be their scene reporter.
“I did a little review of Harrogate and I was the runner-up in the competition and got my article printed.
“I’ve always had an interest in photography from a young age so I decided to enter the competition,” Stuart, 64, who lives in Harrogate, tells the Manchester Evening News.Ĭrowds at Flesh, 1993 (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes) He saw they were asking readers to send in a photograph review of where they lived for a chance to win a trip on the Orient Express - and he decided to take part. His second career began in 1989 at the age of 32 when, during a trip to Manchester, he picked up a copy of gay zine Scene Out. Read more: MasterChef winner Simon Wood launches CHEESE fine dining restaurant in Manchesterīy day, he worked at a college in Harrogate teaching further education (FE) studies, and by night, he was snapping photographs of nightclubbers for gay magazines. The photos were taken in the early 90s while Stuart says he essentially lived a double life.
Stuart discovered pictures of celebrities, some even before they had become famous, and club goers at the likes of Manchester’s Paradise Factory, Manto, and the Hacienda, Garlands in Liverpool and Flamingos in Blackpool. Those negatives, which had remained untouched for almost 30 years, would prove to be an essential time capsule of the queer nightclub scene in the north as it emerged from out of the shadows and into the spotlight in the 90s. At the start of the lockdown, Stuart Linden Rhodes looked at the items in his attic collecting dust and decided that it was now time to have a proper clear out.Īlongside boxes of knick-knacks and other items, he came across a collection of ring-binders containing thousands of photo negatives.