The Independent: Anarchy In The UK
An interesting article on punk in ‘The Independent’ yesterday. It includes a gallery of great photos, featuring rare shots of Adam Ant, Jordan, Billy idol, Little Nell, Siouxsie etc, plus Derek Jarman at the premiere of Jubilee.
Anarchy in the UK: The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 was also the year that punk hit
Photographer Simon Barker was there to capture it. Michael Bracewell opens his archive.
Punk lasted in the UK for little more than 14 months, between 1976 and the Jubilee Summer of 1977. Thirty-five years later, in another Jubilee year, how might we regard the intense, chaotic, moody, surreal, futuristic-yet-Victorian aesthetics of the movement? In answer to this question, photographs taken at the time by Simon Barker, also known as Six, go a long way to articulating the ways in which a phase of youth culture attained the impact of a manifesto – while never quite losing the cool allure and faintly slapstick temperament of its confrontational amateurism.
• Continue reading, at ‘The Independent’, here.
