Vicky Grout might not be a name known to you if you're someone who isn't paying close attention to today's grime scene, but if you are in any way interested, you've most definitely seen her photos. She took THAT photo of Skepta at a party, and she's proceeded to make waves with her signature style, her dedication to analogue photography, and her love for everything surrounding grime. It's impossible to have a conversation with her without noticing just how passionate she is about what she does, and how much fun she's having.
Still ridiculously young for someone who's enjoying her level of notoriety, Vicky is still experimenting, and still studying; she's just finished a foundation course, and is starting university in the extremely near future. As you can probably guess, this means that her schedule is pretty damn hectic, and as part of SUPRA's #AlwaysOnTheRun campaign which shines a light on young creatives around Europe, we thought now might be a good time to sit down with her to talk about her work, how she fell in love with photography, and how she manages being so busy.
So, how did you get into photography?
I think I started doing it when I was about 14. I can’t remember what made me want to do it in the first place but I remember just going to the park and trying to take really ‘artsy’ photos of swans and trees and stuff, but that was in like year seven or something. I think I started properly taking photos when I picked up our old family camera—an Olympus Stylus Epic—and I was just taking pictures of stuff while I was out, and of mates, but actually putting thought into the image. It’s always been film; I’ve always been shooting on film.
I think the first thing that made me want to do it properly, especially on film, was Viktor Vauthier. I saw his work, and I must have been about 13 or something, and at the time I wasn’t aware of analogue photography but I looked at his work and I knew there was something different about it. Then I found out it was film, and I just thought ‘sick, okay’, and then I got our film camera and just started shooting. Up until last October I’d taken a year’s break—since it was just a hobby, shooting on film is a bit of an expensive hobby—so I took a bit of a break and focused more on my graphics work at college. I picked it up again last October, just for fun, and I took my camera to that Skepta and A$AP Bari things at Shapes—that was the first grime thing I took my camera to—and it just started out as a bit of fun but then obviously progressed into something a lot more than that.
