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Post Punk City
''If, like me, you came of age in Glasgow in the late 1970s, early 1980s then the photographs in this wonderful book will transport you straight back there. If you didn't, then this book will show you what it looked and felt like for us that did.''
Bobby Gillespie
''The life captured in Post Punk City is at once hyper-specific to the time and place of central Scotland but, as with all great street or gig photography, captures the universalities of living life in the near-modern era. A really beautiful document.''
Monorail Music
A new independent publication from Chris Brickley (the now sold-out photobooks 16 YEARS, Saints & Sinners, The Inner Circle) presents the remarkable archive of photographer Martin McClenaghan.
Photobook Post Punk City turns the lens on his native Glasgow during its period of transition, from the last remnants of the city of urban myth through to its emergence as European Capital of Culture in 1990.
McClenaghan focuses on the city’s architecture, river and the people at its heart. The typical warmth, humour, resilience and sense of community shines through, tempered by poverty and latent violence. We see bustling streets and markets, crumbling tenements and towering blocks, demos and marches, parks and ships, work and leisure.
This is truly the ‘post-punk era’ with vibes and scenes to match, and Post Punk City also presents McClenaghan’s unique visual archive of live music. Those key gigs of 1980 – The Fall and Cramps at Glasgow Tech, Banshees with Altered Images and Scars, Magazine and Bauhaus. Early Ants, New Order, Orange Juice, U2, Bad Manners. Test Dept standing in the Doulton Fountain on Glasgow Green. Many of the iconic genres and youth tribes are on show, with fans as the lifeblood of the live music experience.
Sights and sounds in context. Beauty and ugliness, hope and menace.
It’s all here in a largely-unpublished and vital archive. If you didn’t live it, you can now.
With a tender foreword from Bobby Gillespie, this book presents the last days of the Glasgow of legend, and the first days of the new.
Limited edition of 500
A5, 176pp