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Credit: Kevin Cummins
As a 55-year-old Englishman, countless people have asked me over the last year or so if I’m excited about the Oasis reunion. And I’ll be honest: not really.
Yes I was a youngster in the Nineties, living through the golden age of British music, but I completely missed the Oasis memo. While everyone was going mad for Wonderwall, I was losing myself in sweaty warehouse raves till 6am.
To me, Britpop felt insular, nostalgic, backward-looking; everything the techno scene wasn’t. So when Liam swaggered onto the TV with that trademark sneer, I just shrugged and went back to my Prodigy records.
But now, 30 years later, with the reunion sending the UK into delirium, I found myself wondering what I’d missed. And the answer came in an unexpected place: a photography exhibition sprawled across Wembley Park featuring Kevin Cummins’ intimate portraits of the Gallagher brothers from 1994, just before they became the biggest band in Britain.
What the camera caught
Brothers: Liam and Noel Through the Lens of Kevin Cummins isn’t your typical rock photography exhibition. These aren’t the usual posed shots of leather-clad rock gods with guitars. Instead, Cummins – the genius behind those iconic Joy Division and Smiths photographs – has captured something far more interesting: the actual human beings behind the mythology
Credit: Kevin Cummins
The first thing that strikes you is how young they look. Noel’s barely 27, Liam’s 21 and they’re both clearly having the time of their lives. I glimpse a shot of them leaping onto the back of a London bus like overgrown kids – and suddenly I get it. This isn’t calculated rock-star posturing; this is pure, unfiltered joy at their own ridiculous good fortune.
That said, it’s the quieter moments that really hit home. There’s one photo where they’re leaning into each other, and the body language tells a completely different story to the backstage bust-ups we’d hear about later.
These are brothers who clearly love each other, despite their macho posturing; who understand each other’s jokes, who’ve got each other’s backs against the world. Cummins caught them in that brief window before fame turned toxic, when being in Oasis was still the best thing that had ever happened to them.
Credit: Kevin Cummins
What’s remarkable about these photographs is how they capture lightning in a bottle; that precise moment when Oasis were about to explode, but hadn’t yet been consumed by its own success. They’re still wearing tracksuits and vintage jumpers; there’s nothing polished or media-trained about them. They’re just two Manchester lads who’ve stumbled into something extraordinary.
The exhibition includes shots from their first studio session, candid hotel room moments and that famous image of them in Manchester City shirts with “Brother” emblazoned across their chests. Looking at these now, you realize that Cummins wasn’t just documenting a band – he was creating their visual mythology, helping them understand who they were becoming.
Understanding the phenomenon
Standing among these larger-than-life images scattered across Wembley Park, I finally understood what I’d dismissed so casually in the 90s. Oasis weren’t really about the music; they were about possibility. They represented this idea that ordinary people from ordinary places could become extraordinary, that you didn’t need connections or posh accents or art school credentials to matter.
Credit: Kevin Cummins
The rave scene I loved was anonymous, collective, about losing yourself in the crowd. Oasis was the opposite: it was about individual personalities, about Liam’s attitude and Noel’s songs and their complicated, public relationship. It was theater, but theater performed by people who felt real.
Maybe that’s why the reunion has hit so hard. We’re not just getting the band back together – we’re getting the brothers back together, closing a circle that’s been broken for 15 years. These photographs remind us what we lost when the feuding started, what made Oasis special in the first place.
Brothers: Liam and Noel Through the Lens of Kevin Cummins runs until 30 September at Wembley Park. Entry is free. A book, Oasis The Masterplan, featuring Cummins’ photos, is also on sale now.
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