The British intimacy of ‘the afters’

Every­one knows the three phas­es of a good night out: First, there are the pres – the cheap booze downed to tin­ny music from a phone speak­er. Then, the main event. And final­ly – for the real ones – come the afters. The lights flick­er on, the club doors swing open, and the strangers you’ve just shared hours in a sweaty mosh­pit with file out like moths to the light of the near­est kebab shop. 

There’s a cama­raderie in these hours, a shared unrav­el­ing. Make­up smudged, tights fresh­ly lad­dered, voic­es hoarse from singing too loud. Maybe the sky is start­ing to pale and the first signs of the next day are start­ing to stir – but for those still rid­ing the last waves of the last night, time becomes no object. As 54-year-old pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mis­cha Haller puts it, it feels like ​“it will go on forever”.

These are the moments the Swiss-born pho­tog­ra­ph­er tries to cap­ture in his new pho­to­book, Not Going Home. Over the course of three months in 1998, Haller trav­elled across UK cities – from Brighton to Edin­burgh – cap­tur­ing British youth in this post-club haze. ​“I went to bed ear­ly so that I was fresh, and start­ed shoot­ing at 4:30 in the morn­ing,” he explains. Bleary-eyed from bed, Haller would pick out ​“good groups” as they emerged from clubs and ask to fol­low them around, record­ing the hours spent on beach­es, cafes and slumped against road curbs as the sun began to rise.

The then 27-year-old had been pho­tograph­ing club-goers for years pri­or, for­mer­ly work­ing as a club pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Paris before mov­ing to Lon­don in the mid-’90s. It was dur­ing his time shoot­ing for women’s mag­a­zine Minx (what he calls a female ver­sion of Loaded) in the cap­i­tal, when he noticed just how revered ​“afters” cul­ture is to the British; this was a phe­nom­e­non, he observed, that was built into the city’s day-to-day func­tion­ing. ​“What is amaz­ing is all the infra­struc­ture here, and not just in Lon­don, but also in the oth­er cities,” Haller says. ​“You can get out of a club at 5 am, and there will be some greasy spoon open that actu­al­ly serves you break­fast!” Post-club feast­ing fea­tures heav­i­ly in Haller’s pho­tos – in some, twen­ty-some­things are sur­round­ed by poly­styrene box­es or plates of chips – in oth­ers they’re lin­ger­ing under McDonald’s door­frames or grin­ning in antic­i­pa­tion through kebab shop windows.

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The British rev­er­ence for afters goes deep­er, though: There’s a feel­ing of trans­gres­sion to stay­ing up into the ear­ly hours – a past-your-bed­time defi­ance that off­sets the rigid social cus­toms often ascribed to British cul­ture. ​“I think there’s the desire for the night not to end because you’re hav­ing such a great time for five, six hours and you want to go on for­ev­er,” says Haller. ​“But also, when you let go in Britain then you real­ly let go, because it’s a very reserved cul­ture dur­ing the day or the week, but then on the week­end the gloves are off and any­thing is possible.”

It’s a feel­ing that clear­ly res­onates with peo­ple today: Since the pho­to­book was pub­lished by the British Cul­ture Archive ear­li­er this year, it has sold out its first and now sec­ond edi­tions. ​“I thought it would take us a year to sell a thou­sand books. It took us three days. It’s crazy,” says Haller. ​“I think they struck a nerve because peo­ple are almost look­ing for some­thing real and ana­logue, because we’re going down into this AI dig­i­tal tech world and as a counter-prod­uct of that we’re look­ing more and more for some­thing that we can actu­al­ly feel and touch and be part of and that makes us feel human again.”

The pho­tos are all tak­en on slide film, a method – Haller explains excit­ed­ly – that pro­duces pos­i­tive (rather than neg­a­tive) images that can be direct­ly pro­ject­ed using a slide pro­jec­tor. The results cap­ture the grungy authen­tic­i­ty of a time before the dig­i­tal age – away from the glossy sheen of the main event you’d now see plas­tered over Insta­gram sto­ries, and glimpses into moments where peo­ple were think­ing of noth­ing but the time they were in. ​“We’re now being inun­dat­ed by fake pho­tos and fake video and we want to have a real expe­ri­ence, and this book is about the realest of expe­ri­ences you can get: stay­ing up all night on drugs or on alco­hol and hav­ing a blast and nev­er want­i­ng it to end,” Haller says. 

There’s no ques­tion the world looks entire­ly dif­fer­ent now, but Haller reck­ons the pull of the ear­ly hours is uni­ver­sal. ​“It’s the two-worlds-col­lide moment, where the street sweep­ers who are up and work­ing col­lide with the ravers, the club­bers,” he says. ​“I just love that time of the day, I always think the light is so amaz­ing and just the quiet­ness. You feel like it’s full of possibilities”.

Not Going Home by Mis­cha Haller is pub­lished by the British Cul­ture Archive.

Ella Glos­sop is Huck’s social lead. Fol­low her on Bluesky.

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