Photographer reflects on city's 90s queer scene

"Nottingham's queer scene at the time was very mixed. It was cohesive. Everybody was together."

Photographer Stuart Linden Rhodes worked for the magazines All Points North and Gay Times from 1990, travelling across the country to review queer nightlife in different cities.

"Nottingham had something unique in the fact that there were four different monthly one-nighters, but they were spread on the first, second, third and fourth weekends of the month," he said.

The 67-year-old will return to the city to display a collection of his photographs and tell the stories behind them at an event at Nottingham Central Library at 18:30 GMT on 6 February.

The photographer, from Leeds, digitised pictures he had in his attic during Covid and began posting them on Instagram.

He said his page "has gone crazy" and he has since published three books.

Explaining more about his work in the 1990s, Mr Rhodes said: "I would go out and come to places like Nottingham, spend one or two nights there and try and visit every venue, every location, come away, write the review and take photographs," he said.

He added Nottingham had a "really good atmosphere" and said there were some "cracking club nights".

His collection features pictures of boyband Take That, who he said came to Nottingham "quite a few times" and played at Ritzy's nightclub.

In addition to being a photographer, Mr Rhodes worked at a college of further education and said he "basically created two personas" - one for each of his jobs.

He said: "I always used to joke with my colleagues about how they were going home to do gardening or to play with their train set or whatever, and I was going to go home, fill the car with my friends, grab the cameras and drive off down to Nottingham and have a night taking photographs.

"The only problem was coming back at 02:00 or 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning and then having to be back in the classroom at 09:00."

The event at Nottingham Central Library will take place in collaboration with Notts Queer History Archive.

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