Desperately seeking the real KEIR STARMER, down at his local pub!
CHRIS FLOYD shoots SIR KEIR STARMER for YOU Magazine. Such great images - huge thanks to Ester Malloy for the commission 🙌
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In Chris’s words…
“This is the second time I’ve photographed Sir Keir Starmer. Last month I was commissioned by You Magazine to spend a couple of hours with him in the lead up to the final Arsenal game of the season, against Everton, played at their home stadium, The Emirates, in London. The night before the game, I was given the details of the pub where he likes to meet his football pals, and told to arrive there at 2.15pm. The game was due to kick off at 4pm. This meant I’d have about 90 minutes to shoot my pictures: Sir Keir in the pub, doing what football fans do in pubs before football matches: drink beer and talk incessantly about the fact that Arsenal really need a decent centre forward.
I arrive and we’re introduced, he remembers me from the book cover shoot, and I’m invited to sit at the big pub table among the group, and snap away. I introduce myself to everyone at the table and explain why I’m here and that if any of them don’t want to be seen in the pictures then they should just say and I will respect that wish. One of his friends, a fellow barrister, says that he’s more than happy to be seen with him, adding, “I adore him.”
Pints are drunk. The conversation is relentless, exclusively about football.
At 3.15pm we set off for the 20 min walk to the stadium, Sir Keir with his son, and about ten other people who he meets up with before the game. At first the walk was quiet, small groups of other fans here and there, unrecognised, anonymous. But then we emerged from the labyrinth of back streets onto Hornsey Road and, as always with a football crowd, you start to get the feeling that you’re one of millions of bees coalescing around the hive.
I’m walking backwards, trying to shoot pictures of Sir Keir with his two friends, Chris and Macca, relying entirely on their goodwill to tell me if I’m going to step in front of a bus, or under a lorry. I make the comment, “This is where I get to say the immortal Ginger Rogers line, ‘I did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels,’” and it gets the laugh from the three of them that I need to make a picture fit for a magazine opening spread.”
Sir Keir Starmer, 19 May 2024
