Roger Sargent: "I'm a music fan, and I like celebrating bands"

One would think that being described by the Guardian as "the UK's most important music photographer" would give Roger Sargent license to have a little bit of an ego. But when he picks up the phone to speak with me, the multi-hyphenate photographer, filmmaker, and manager is down-to-earth, friendly, and game for a chat.

The pandemic saw Sargent – who has worked for NME and photographed some of the biggest bands in the world, from AC/DC to Aimee Mann to The Clash – take up yet another vocation.

"I actually enrolled in university," he says. "I'm a year into a Psychology degree, and I'm really enjoying it. It's something I'd wanted to do for a long time.

"Working with a lot of people with mental health problems as I have," he continues, "it seemed like quite a logical step. Ddoing what I do, there's only so much you can do to support people without the right tools, if you know what I mean."

Sargent also found himself "falling out of love" with photography quite a while ago, and before venturing into psychology, he moved in the direction of making music videos instead. He even went so far as to direct There Are No Innocent Bystanders, a 2011 documentary on English rock band The Libertines (with whom Sargent has enjoyed an incredibly fruitful 20+ year friendship and working partnership).

"I felt like I was in a bit of a dead end, if I'm honest," he says about pulling away from photography. "Which I know sounds incredibly ungrateful, because I was shooting quite a lot of covers. But it just didn't feel like it was going anywhere for me, personally.

"I didn't really feel like I could be very creative a lot of the time. I was working to sometimes quite ludicrous briefs, even with a magazine that professes to be a little bit creative."

Despite this, when the pandemic began, it also provided Sargent with the time he needed to digitize his archives. And in the process, he found himself finding a love for the craft again.

Enter his latest exhibition, a collaboration with Snap Galleries that puts Sargent's best work with The Libertines properly on display. Full of archival images and outtakes from their photoshoots over the years, the exhibit takes you on an intimate, virtual reality tour of life on the road with a major rock band.

Is it hard taking photos of and making films about your friends, I wonder?

"As a journalist, in having a relationship or friendship with someone you work with – especially a long term one – you have to ask some questions of yourself. 'Am I telling the truth here?', for example," he says.

"I still try to be objective, but you enter a whole new realm, especially with a band that is made up of four completely different individuals and their managers. And at the time I think there were like four managers or something ridiculous, so everybody's got their story that they want to tell, as well.

"For instance, I did a mini documentary in Thailand, when the third album was being made. For me, the most pressing thing seemed to be Peter's addiction and rehab. That seemed, as well as the band getting back together and all that malarky, quite key. Because that, like it or not, was one of the biggest road blocks for the band. So to ignore that and not discuss it in any way would've been amiss, but it pissed off quite a few people," he says.

"Not Peter," he adds hastily. "He loved it, and not because it was all about him – he just loved the fact that it was being acknowledged, because he didn't like things like that being hidden or lied about."

I've also had the privilege of speaking to my friends for stories, so I understand where Sargent is coming from. On the other side of the conversation about integrity, or staying objective and honest, it's quite a beautiful experience to be able to say, 'I love and care about these people, and this is how I see them.'

"I'm a music fan," Sargent agrees, "and I like celebrating bands rather than calling them out for being shit. I think in a lot of ways, that's wasted energy."

So did Sargent get into photography because he loved music?

"It's a chicken and egg thing, a little bit," he chuckles. "I definitely used photography to get into gigs. If I gave people prints, they let me in for nothing. It was useful from that point.

"Music is fundamental," he reflects. "It's funny, I've got a nine year old son, and he's constantly singing all the time. That's kind of what I was like, when I was a kid."

Sargent grew up "kind of all over." Born in London to an English teacher mother and a father who filmed such TV classics as The Professionals and Minder, Sargent was raised in the Midlands of England, before he moved to South Africa, and then back to the UK – "Somerset, Derbyshire, and then back to London," he says.

"I think partly because of my moving about, I have a short attention span. I did end up doing a lot of different things. I've managed bands, record labels – to varying degrees of success," he laughs, "but I've found it hard to do the same thing over and over."

And even Sargent's photography work isn't limited to just The Libertines or music. I mention a portrait of John Malkovich I was admiring on his website earlier.

"That was actually in the shower of a hotel room," he recalls. "For In The Line of Fire.

"I think it was that film, anyway," he says. "I literally had three minutes with him. And every picture was brilliant, because he's just amazing. We used to get to do a few actors at NME. And I always loved shooting actors, because they can act.

"You just get great pictures. But he was lovely, absolutely lovely. Oftentimes when you shoot actors, you're usually the last person of a day of really boring things, so for them to still be nice, polite and helpful is great."

The Snap Galleries exhibition of Sargent's work is running online now.