The TV production company Endemol UK has just asked me if I know any quirky girls that want to appear on the next season of Snog Marry Avoid for BBC3. If you’re interested please can you note me with an email addy so that I can pass it on. Thanks girls!
Andy
andy@neolestat.com
Photographic Studio & Gallery
4 East Hill
St Austell, Cornwall
PL25 4TW
Mobile UK: 07795 262665
Mobile Int: +44 7795 262665
The day I met the great Lloyd Kaufman… Co-Founder of Troma Entertainment and responsible for The Toxic Avenger series of movies and Class of Nuke ‘Em High.
If I look a little like a rabbit caught in the headlights I was… First off I have blonde hair, second this was an accostment and taken with my own camera, thirdly Lloyd is a hero of mine, fourthly I have Toxie staring over my shoulder and fifthly and lastly, what you can’t see is the Troma Girl’s leg wrapped round me… Not that I’m complaining mind.
A cherished memory indeed!
Victoria Beckham once said she wanted to be as famous as ‘Persil’; I sat in a Starbucks some time ago, drinking my latte, waiting to go into Madame JoJo’s for a burlesque shoot and Diane asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. I sat and thought for a while and then replied to her that I wanted to be the ‘Robbie Williams’ of photography… I still do!
Andy Warhol famously quoted: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” and with the advent of social networking someone quipped: “In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people”.
I was once famous for the wrong reasons back in the early 90’s; I had been left in charge of a company that sold reverse-osmosis water purifiers to the domestic market and I was asked to demonstrate how wonderful they were to a couple in Essex. The next day I had a whole page spread in The Guardian regarding my underhanded and scaremongering tactics. In my opinion it was a totally unfair review! The system really did remove shrimp, algae, bacteria, stray metals, poisonous chemicals and carcinogens from tap water… It’s not my fault Essex tap water probably doesn’t contain any of them to remove is it?
Needless to say, when the company’s director came back from his holidays he was less than happy.
All my life I’ve struggled with conformity: At school they taught me things I didn’t want to know and failed to teach me the things I wanted to know. Knowing Pi to ten decimal places has never once helped me in the real world, neither has dissecting a frog. Much more useful would have been how to really shine up a pair of shoes, how to roll a decent cigarette or how to avoid police capture after a really good day of shoplifting.
I was too young to be a punk in ’77. I was eleven. My parents, school and counsellor hated my dress sense and earrings. I was continually picked up by the police in Kings Road and Soho and taken to a local police station where my parents were phoned and asked if they knew where I was… Of course they didn’t! How responsible then, of the local West End constabulary, to once put me in a holding cell with a group of late teen skinheads sniffing glue and drinking cider… I came out of there wrecked to an interrogation by my parents and a police accusation that maybe I was a ‘rent boy’.
In ’77, growing up in Bromley surrounded by The Bromley Contingent which included Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Jordan and Billy Idol amongst others what hope was there for me?
I was too young, anonymous and on the very periphery of something un-conformist and new… Something I loved. Punk music had a message that I understood. Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Sex’ and Soho sold things I didn’t understand but liked the look of… The seedy underbelly of London cried out to me.
Having learnt Pi and having dissected frogs and been beaten up by my German teacher I eventually left school with a reasonable amount of ‘O’ Levels to enter the adult world of work… My first job, as a draughtsman taught me how nice Chinese BBQ Pork Buns were and not to try to beat up 25 year old, rugby playing colleagues. In subsequent jobs I learnt not to take snakes to work, not to date the claimants if you work for the dole office, how to make a sale without the money seeing the till, how to strip down an M16 and demolish phone books and the party wall between a gunsmiths and a TV rental shop with a .357 Magnum.
I learnt that in a warehouse, even if you dislike your colleagues you shouldn’t drill through their hands when putting up storage racking and I learnt that Selfridges was a shop and not a dating agency where every girl on the perfume counters and shop dressing department was fair game. I also learnt from Selfridges that celebrities weren’t to be abused and that calling Craig Charles a pervert and spending an evening taking the piss out of Tony Blackburn’s beautifully sequined ‘bolero’ jacket will get you fired.
The last straw came aged 38: I had blagged my way through the building trade, from the very bottom, to the eventual position of senior management in a building supply company. I had the company car, the salary, the medical benefits and the company pension. I also had regular counselling, a hundred mile round trip to work and back on the M25 every day and an office where I could lock the door and cry my eyes out.
Eventually, after shooting the office ‘darling’ topless in a graveyard during working hours, going to work dressed as a Chinese resplendent in my silk Kung-Fu suit and buying my first set of studio lighting through the company and posting the subsequent photo of my MD/CEO grinning like someone who keeps body parts under his desk onto deviantART I was asked to leave and follow my calling as a photographer.
Which brings us up to date… August 2009.
My second bout of fifteen minutes of fame: Take a while out, open a new tab and Google ‘Andy Craddock + Church’.
Over 16 million hits on my website in just over a week, 115 of a possible 195 countries have visited my site including The Vatican City. I just hope Pope Benedict XVI is a fan! Approximately 77% of visitors add me to their favourites, on the day the story broke I was the third most popular read item on the BBC New Website, (more popular that day than even Michael Jackson), over a 1300 websites and forums now link to my site, I’ve been in 5 national papers, I was front page news in two Jerusalem papers, I’ve been on BBC radio twice and BBC TV.
Even better than the above; I’m in the local papers every week and apparently I should be run out of town by the locals bearing pitch forks and burning brands.
All of this media attention just for shooting a couple of models naked and touching one another on the altar of a local 13th Century Church. Whatever next?
What the media fail to mention is that behind the controversy is a less than serious photographer chasing his dream. With my tongue firmly in my cheek I want to offend a few people and the rest I want to make laugh, provoke them into thoughtfulness or make them look beautiful.
I’m not a wedding or child photographer that St Austell residents and the Cornish in general need fear. I am a guy that has worked with a lot of the UK’s major burlesque talent, I have worked Gay Prides and Sex shows. I work The Xpo and other sex trade shows. I work with Transvestites, Drag Artists and Transsexuals. I work with burlesque designers, latex companies and BDSM suppliers. I work with alternative models and glamour models. I also try to work with my heroes from the 70’s and 80’s whenever I get the opportunity.
I do charity work… This year for St Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth (with the Plymouth Calendar Girls) and the Macmillan trust (by auctioning some of the ‘Church’ work in London through Fetishvisions in September). I spent a year working with an autistic children’s group in London. I am fully CRB checked.
Part of my business is a social enterprise helping to promote Cornish models.
Part of my business is a social enterprise helping to promote the Cornish LGBT community, the Cornish BDSM community, the Cornish alternative modelling scene and the Cornish glamour modelling scene. To this end my studio is a safe haven where all are welcome and a venue where I hold a party monthly that these diverse groups can meet with one another and the locals without prejudice.
Neolestat is a brand name, a studio, an art gallery, a modelling agency, a mini boutique and a party venue.
Andy Craddock is a guy having fun, doing what he loves to do with people he loves to work with. I have no message to preach in my work apart from maybe tolerance. I am non conformist and here to amuse you if possible.
In the words of the great Robbie Williams (horribly out of order to suit my purpose!): “I’m a burning effigy of everything I used to be, shake your arse come over here; Let me Entertain You”.
the one the only Andy Craddock …..
Thank you everyone that’s joined this group. I appreciate the support and as we’ve reached the 500 member milestone I thought a message of introduction was in order.
If you haven’t seen my website it’s: http://www.facebook.com/l/f6e85;www.neolestat.com
I’m a professional photographer based in Cornwall in the UK though I shoot nationally and internationally as needed and I specialise in fetish, BDSM, glamour and Burlesque photography.
Part of my business is a shop stocking BDSM related goods, part of the business is a social enterprise and not-for-profit modelling agency helping promote West Country modelling and the final part of the business is a 6 day a week drop-in for coffee, meeting house where the BDSM community can meet with the LGBT community, the glamour, porn and alternative modelling community and the locals.
Currently I’m working on a few personal projects including the continuation of my ‘church’ project… Google ‘Andy Craddock + Church’ if you missed the controversy and I’m shooting for a pay-per-view art-core-porn website I’m developing for a niche market.
I offer paid and TFP or CD work depending on the project and I shoot model portfolios on a paid only basis unless you’re joining the agency. You are also more than welcome to contact me with any commercial projects you may have and I’ll discuss a fee with you.
I’d like this group to become a mini community within the FB community for models and selective togs alike. I closed the group to avoid non-industry people joining and hassling you models.
I’d like you all to use the discussions… Currently there is a discussion regarding modelling levels and payment, my art-core site, a discussion for male models and a discussion regarding the church work. Feel free to use them please (especially the one regarding rates as I’m out of touch here) and feel free to start your own discussions regarding anything you want… Model safety, name and shame dodgy togs and models, clothes swaps… Whatever you like!
Please upload some photos… but please don’t spam. Upload what in your opinion is your best photo and then we know who you are.
Use the wall… Promote whatever you like within the industry, share the FB links you’ve found for other modelling groups but please invite other models (especially within the glamour field and/or male models) to this group too. Again, please don’t spam the wall with links to the Maltese travel industry… I’ll just delete them and probably the spammer too. Keep things relevant.
So… Once more, thanks for joining… I’ll post this as a discussion too so feel free to either comment there or note me directly with any questions you may have. Enjoy your stay 🙂
Andy
Burlesque
Annette Betty
Cecilia Bravo
Chaz Royal
Chrys Columbine
Dangerous Dolly
Desmond O’Connor
Miss Dolly Blowup
Femme Ferale
Frivolitease
Gypsy Hotel
Mademoiselle Katarina
Marianne Cheesecake
Miss Lalla Morte
Missy Macabre
Pustra & Vile-een
Romany Diva of Magic
Miss Scarlet Daggers
Sienna Sinclaire
Siren Stiletto
Stella Plumes
Stranger than Paradise
Trixie Sparkle
The London Burlesque Festival
Violet Crumble
Warren Speed
Neolestat's Photographic Studio & Modelling Agency 