ABOUT
‘The Wynd Photographic’ is the term name brand moniker project description creative practice of photographer and filmmaker Pete Wilkinson, based out of the Wynd Gallery in the centre of Hexham, Northumberland.
Alongside his work with the Wynd, Pete is co-director of Blind Crow Pictures, a production company he established in London in 2010 with director and cinematographer Matt Rozier. After fourteen years and with over 300 trailers, teasers and mini-documentaries under their belts, Matt and Pete are still enjoying exciting collaborations with some truly inspirational institutions and organisations. Across his work with the Wynd and Blind Crow, Pete has had the good fortune to work with clients of all shapes, sizes and industries:
Pete grew up in rural Northumberland just a stone’s throw from the River South Tyne (literally and figuratively). His formative years were spent on the banks of that mighty waterway, neck deep in opportunities for mischief and with barely a flicker of parental oversight. A modern day Huck Finn if you will, but without the raft-making skills and the scattergun use of the n-word.
Photography couldn’t have been further from young Pete’s mind. Indeed, he’s come a long way since his dark days as a key member of the notorious west Northumberland biker gang, The Fabulous Biker Boys (pictured). Pete was the muscle of the gang; an enforcer of sorts; and he developed a fearsome reputation for his quick temper and his even quicker fists. In ‘88, after a prolonged turf war with rival gang The Temple of Boom, Pete decided to hang up his uniform (jean shorts and stabilisers). He kept his big red helmet however, as it was very big and very red and was the source of his treasured nickname, The Big Red Helmet.
The next decade flew by in a blur: Pete did school, took up smoking, played football, ate Wham bars, developed a low sense of self-worth that would haunt him in later life, played more football, went to Italy, listened to Guns n Roses, had a chinchilla named Stanley, became emotionally unavailable as a coping strategy, played more football, sided with Oasis, mourned Diana, then turned nineteen.
He took an extra year to complete sixth form so as to make sure he did a really, really good job, yet left with only 1.5 A levels. Although mathematics was not one of his chosen subjects, even he could work out that doing a year more than anyone else only to achieve half of the qualifications, was less than ideal. Many hours were spent in reflection, pint in hand in the corner of the bar where he’d worked full-time during the last year of his education, trying to pinpoint the exact cause of his academic failure. The other day-drinkers tried to cheer him with their hot-takes on how education was overrated and how he shouldn’t worry. This well meaning hobo-brain-trust may well have brought Pete some solace that afternoon, but they were pissed and he couldn’t understand what they were saying.
As a result of his poor academic performance, the first phase of Pete’s adult working life reads like a roll-call of low-skilled positions the UK is struggling to fill due to a lack of migrant labour post-Brexit:
Shelf-stacker, Night Shelf-stacker, Barman, Waiter, Night Porter, Barman, Jobseeker, Labourer, Telesales Agent, Customer Service Agent, Data Entry Agent, Telesales Agent, Barman, Night Receptionist, Jobseeker, Labourer, Cleaner, Driver, Tractor Driver, Industrial Cleaner, Dental Technician.
It was after eighteen months working in a Dental Laboratory that an auntie of a friend of a friend told Pete two things that changed his life while sharing a cigarette on a bowling green one evening. The first was that he had a nice smile. The second was that after the age of 21, you can apply to University as a mature student and your qualifications (or lack thereof) don’t hold as much sway over your success or failure.
Three years later, Pete completed a BA in Performance at Northumbria University, graduating top of his year with a 1st Class Honours degree and going straight into a professional production of Macbeth in which he played Banquo and which took him to Italy and then the Globe Theatre in Neues, Dusseldorf. He returned to the UK to accept a place at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where he completed an MA in Classical Acting. Whilst at Central, he was invited to become part of the Young Writers Programme at the Royal Court Theatre as a result of a play he had written for his BA. He attended the programme on top of his studies at Central, graduating from both in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2011 Pete worked as an actor across the UK on fringe theatre productions, national theatre tours, and a number of small budget independent films. He maintained his interest in writing for stage and screen by working as a reader for new-writing theatres in London, and it was as this interest grew and his interest in performing waned, that he started to work with cinematographer Matt Rozier, forming the production company Blind Crow Pictures. Initially Pete would write and produce material while Matt would shoot and edit, but after festival runs and a BAFTA longlist place for their first two short films, they began creating promotional material for arts organisations, and soon were both learning and performing every role required in the film production process.
When Blind Crow became established and Pete no longer needed to be in London for each project, he moved back to the North-East. He started to receive invitations to give lectures in performance and the creative industries at local Universities, and within a year this led to a part-time position as a Senior Lecturer at Teesside Uni. While there, Pete completed his PGCE for higher education, and it was as a much needed break from being stretched far too thinly between film work, lecturing and studying, that he started to hike. And, it was while he was hiking that he started to take photographs in an effort to document his adventures. And, it was while he was taking photographs on a hike in Austria in 2014, that he felt a calm and a sense of authenticity unlike anything he had experienced since he was a member of The Fabulous Biker Boys and was known for his big red helmet.
Pete left Teesside University in 2017, partly due to photography taking up more and more of his time, partly due to the horror show of watching a once great seat of learning drive its commitment to anything other than recruitment, head first into a wall in slow motion. He split his time between the north-east and a base in Essex over the next few years, taking on more ambitious projects with Matt and Blind Crow Pictures, and starting to accept commissions as a photographer.
Some of Pete’s shortlisted images from the UK Landscape Photographer of Year, British Photographer, and Outdoor Photographer competitions
By 2022, Pete had been shortlisted in multiple categories over multiple years for UK Landscape Photographer of the Year, British Photographer of the Year, and Outdoor Photographer of the Year, receiving the odd commendation here and there also. It was at this point, having spent most of the pandemic in his native Northumberland, that he decided to move back full time, and, shortly after, to establish the Wynd Gallery.
Despite never consciously choosing to return to the River South Tyne and the playground of his youth, it is where he has ended up. Every Wednesday he picks up his dogs from day care, just 200 metres from where the first two photos on this page were taken. Sometimes, when he is waiting for the lovely people at Canny Canines to wrangle his unruly labradors, he thinks he catches the familiar sound of stabilisers on gravel, or the echo of young, fabulous boys on bikes, laughing and calling to each other.
He turns and looks, knowing it is only the past come back to play with him, but hopeful nonetheless - of seeing a familiar face, or a glimpse of a flash of red. But there never is. Instead, there is just the sewerage treatment plant that was moved there fifteen years ago. The smell is ripe, and it travels in waves. Although the plant is clearly signposted, Pete always worries that the Canny Canine folk will assume he’s the source of the stench. But, this is not uncommon; the feeling of excitement at the prospect of seeing his beloved dogs, of panic in case Helen from day care thinks he’s had an accident in his trousers, and of nostalgia because he can see the house his late father built. It is an ever-changing but ever present emotional gallimaufrey that Pete has always wrestled with, and that his images, and The Wynd Photographic, are a response to.