I won’t give up “Pete Doherty and the Babyshambles in Fabio Paleari’s photographs”

A brainchild of the friendship between Pete Doherty and photographer Fabio Paleari, I won’t give up is a portrait, intentionally disordered and formless, of British band Babyshambles’ front man. In fact between 2004 and 2006 Paleari followed Doherty on gigs, immortalising him backstage, at parties and above all at those moments that hit big in the tabloids… Thin, womanish, unkempt, sexy, Doherty comes across as a worthy heir to the tradition of rockers maudits (from Johnny Rotten to Jim Morrison), always in the company of a variously assorted community living for “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” and side by side with the on-and-off presence of top model Kate Moss. This singular diary of images, which started out with the singer and photographer meeting at Paul Ro’s crack house (a point of reference on the British underground scene in recent years), comes to a close just a few months after the scandal-video showing Kate Moss taking drugs… I won’t give up is also printed in a limited edition with a photo signed by Fabio Paleari.

Born in Milan in 1963, Paleari made his name with a cycle of photos dealing with the famous Leu family of tattoo artists and with The last beat of Allen Ginsberg, a film-documentary on the poet’s last reading, held in Milan in 1996 just a few months before his death. In 1997 Paleari took part in the Turin Photography Biennale.