Mark Anthony has always had a penchant for fast cars and motorbikes… in fact, “Anything with a high-powered engine and wheels is fine”. His father was a mechanic and there were always motorbikes and cars in the garage, plus his dad did a bit of racing, both cars and bikes. It’s a wonder Mark became a photographer… that’s where he has to thank his father for another of his many hobbies.
Mark grew up in Norwich, which is roughly 160 kilometres north-east of London. When Mark was nine, his father took up photography as a hobby and built a darkroom in the attic. He also built his own enlarger.
Mark remembers coming home from school on his pushbike and noticing that his dad’s car was in the driveway, which was unusual. Inside the house, he noticed the ladder was out and that meant he was in the darkroom. He climbed the ladder, opened up the dark curtains and said, “Hi, Dad”. That, Mark recalls, “scared the shit out of him”. Mark then looked in the developing tray and there was an image appearing on the paper.
“There was the settee from our lounge room and there was a naked lady on the lounge… and it wasn’t mum. I asked, ‘Dad, what’s this?’ He said, ‘Son, this is art’. I remember thinking, ‘If this is art, I’ll have a bit of it’. And that was sort of how I got into photography.”
Mark says he can’t remember exactly what his first camera was, but later his father bought him a Russian-made Zenit 35mm SLR with a 50mm lens. He would get on his pushbike and go out to take pictures.
“You couldn’t take pics like we do today on digital… every 35mm frame had to count. A roll of film could last you a year.”
He recalls he always had in his head what he’d seen in his father’s copies magazine and became a follower of fashion photography. He particularly liked what the just-starting-to-be-noticed David Bailey was doing. Bailey had just taken over from Cecil Beaton at magazine in the UK.
