Words and Pictures
I discovered Quadrophenia (1973) by The Who after seeing the film in 1980 (35). I didn’t care much for the music at the time but the booklet of photographs that came as part of the album rolled all my interests into one clear and complete work of art. What’s more, I could actually own it. Pete Meaden described Mod as 'an aphorism for clean living under difficult circumstances' and we see this tension being played out again and again in Ethan A. Russell’s and Peter Townshend’s photographic story. The image of Paul Weller’s post-Jam band The Style Council took this aphorism to heart. The cover of Our Favourite Shop (1985) shows Weller and
Mick Talbot, suited and loafered, browsing elegantly amid the bric-abrac of a bygone age (36). It would have been my favourite shop too. I discovered British Image 1 (1975) in a second-hand bookshop shortly before I went to art school (37). Together with a host of other distractions, it was images like these that encouraged me to abandon painting and take up a camera. I fell in love with the square format of the book, with its functional iconography and title, and, most of all, with Daniel Meadows’s beautiful photograph of three lads with their pigeon (a Kes sequel of sorts). The book could have been a record with a photo of the band members.
Item 35
Item 36
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