'I've come to realise it's not about wanting to be their friend': Manchester photographer brings music's biggest stars and local talent together in new exhibit

For the last 25 years, Manchester-based photographer Richard Kelly has been attending superstar concerts, hanging out backstage with singers and asking icons to pose in basement studios.

From the Arctic Monkeys and Amy Winehouse to local grime stars, he’s captured some of the biggest and most exciting names when it comes to British music.

His career began whilst working at the Manchester Evening News almost 30 years ago. Originally from Burnage, Richard, then 16, was drawn into the power of the photo as he worked as a messenger for the features department.

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“It was a huge influence on my career,” Richard tells the M.E.N of that time back in 1994. “In fact, if I hadn't worked there as a messenger I don't know if I would have gone into photography.

"It was only from seeing the photographers working on different jobs each day as I delivered things around the building as a 16-year-old messenger that I started to think it would be a possible career option.”

Working on the first floor of the paper’s offices, he got to watch the likes of editor Brian Knowles and Diary Page writers Andy Spinoza and Carl Palmer at work and in their element. It convinced him to take night classes in photography once a week.

Richard eventually went on to study Documentary Photography at university, working as a photo lab technician at the same time to earn some money on the side. Whilst studying during the day, he spent his evenings attending and photographing music raves in Manchester.

When his work got picked up by the likes of music magazines Vice and Dazed, he ‘naturally progressed’ into a career as a music photographer. It led him to eventually become the go-to