"The British photographer Chris Steele-Perkins died, in September, at the age of seventy-eight, after a groundbreaking and globe-spanning career, leaving behind a catalogue that ranges from images of war-torn Afghanistan during the mid- to late nineties to scenes from Japan in the early two-thousands. But Steele-Perkins, a member of the Magnum photo agency, was particularly attuned to discovering the alien, and the alienated, at home, in the United Kingdom."
"Teddy Boys, as they were otherwise known, had emerged in Britain in the nineteen-fifties. They were working-class youths who scandalized mainstream society with their elaborate neo-Edwardian frock coats and drainpipe trousers, their outlandishly styled hair-a quiff up front, and a D.A., or duck's arse, at the nape of the neck-and their skirmishes and ruckuses in dance halls and night clubs."
Chris Steele-Perkins, born in colonial Burma to a British military father and a Burmese mother, combined insider and outsider perspectives in his photography. He became a member of Magnum and produced a globe-spanning catalogue, from images of war-torn Afghanistan in the 1990s to scenes from Japan in the early 2000s. He focused on marginalized groups and subcultures, describing them as "small worlds which have the whole world in them." His first photobook, made with writer Richard Smith and published in 1979, documented the Teddy Boys. The Teddy Boys were working-class youths notable for neo-Edwardian dress, elaborate hairstyles, and raucous behavior.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]