Sam Bush tells us what it's like to photograph riots

Stumbling across the portfolio of photographer Sam Bush, you’ll immediately be struck by the diversity of his work. His singles all demonstrate a refined aesthetic and a coherent style of lifestyle photography that’s incredibly on point. Then there’s the energetic chaos of his gig photos, featuring sweaty, heavily-tattoed guys and girls kicking the crap out of each other in the mosh pit. And then you stumble across a large series on riots – it’s a mixed bag, but a mixed bag of delicious treats.

Looking at his photos of students facing off against the police and buses ablaze in Peckham, we were immediately transported back to a short period of time when it really felt like London was burning, so we asked Sam some questions about what it felt like to be right in the thick of a riot…

What’s your name and where do you come from?

My name’s Sam Bush and I’m a photographer based in London.

Do you remember what made you want to be a photographer?

When I was younger I was never very good at drawing or painting, and although I knew I liked art and images I was at a loss when it came to making my own work in art classes.

At the same time I became interested in photography after spending hours poring over photos in skateboarding magazines like Document and Sidewalk. I thought the pictures in there were incredible and eventually convinced myself that I could maybe try and do that sort of thing and call it art. My teacher at the time was into the idea and it went from there. Now it’s my job, which is kind of crazy.

Tell us about your experience of undergraduate education…

I went to LCC and studied Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. The course itself was really focused on news photographs and covering current affairs. That’s what I thought I wanted to do, but somewhere around the two year mark I started feeling disillusioned with that side of things. It felt to me as though there was a lot of pressure on the students to go to the most war-torn places or photograph the poorest looking people and make a typical photo essay full of wide-eyed children and broken homes. It seemed that it was more about where you’d been and how crazy it was than the story your pictures ended up telling. That annoyed me a bit.

There’s a lot of documentation of riots and protests in your portfolio. Why is that?

During my time at LCC loads of student protests were going on in London and we were encouraged to go and cover what we could. I saw it as a good chance for me to try and put my own slant on things and to try and make something that I could be proud of personally, yet still set in the context of my course.

Tell us about some of the events/incidents that you’ve documented here?

Pretty much every student demo from the so called “Battle of Millbank” in November of 2010 through to the last major protest in 2011. I also lived in Peckham at the time of the rioting caused by the death of Mark Duggan in 2011. I felt a need to document some of what was going on there at the time as well.

What did it feel like to be in the middle of this action?

The first student protest at Millbank was pretty crazy – a result of a lot of new students getting very excited and a large group of anarchists stirring the pot.

When you’re in the middle of a situation like that with police batons swinging all over the place and fires everywhere your adrenaline is at such a level that you often don’t quite realise the danger you’re in until afterwards. It was fun in a weird way, but unnerving at the same time. I just tried to concentrate on taking pictures and making sure that my other classmates were safe. Peckham and the London Riots were just plain frightening though, the student protests were like play fights compared to that.

Did you attend the protests with political or personal allegiances or do you see yourself simply as a documenter?

I didn’t go in with any real allegiances no. I went purely to document what was going on and to try and get some interesting photos that captured that moment in time as I experienced it.

What kinds of projects are you working on right now?

I’m working on a couple of personal bodies of work. One is a continuation of a project called Swimming Pool – a series of photographs taken in one swimming pool over the span of a week using an underwater film camera; very summery and full of colour. The other is tentatively titled Living Together and is a self-examination of being young and living with your significant other. I’m hoping to have both completed by the end of the year if possible.