CREATIVE PRODUCTION ;PHOTOGRAPHY

To propose this portfolio, I have stated its theme as ‘Anarchy and Harmony in the Brighton’. As a background, this writing will introduce an overview for notion of Punk in UK. Firstly, punk as subculture in UK has started in mid 70’s as a new style of protest by Malcolm McLaren, an English impresario, artist, and boutique owner. In order to embody the new style of protest, McLaren has blended his influence from stance of the Situationism, an notion aims social rebel against consumer society with fashions and the music by Sex Pistols, the band organised and managed by him. As a result of the concept and its style, and provocative direction he has suggested, punk culture became an influential movement among the youth and played a role as a breakthrough for their bottled up emotion against reality. However, through the transition of genre as counterculture, punk as a movement has literally declined and its updates has stopped. Thus, the punk movement can be seen it is returned to underground culture supported by minority fans who remains to regard punk as their lifestyle. Not surprisingly, those punks were regarded as minority or deviant from society and often oppressed at that era, and its still remains the same. Based on the background above, I have decided to photograph the ‘holdovers’ from the punk movement and also the younger generation of punks. To propose the series of photographs, I have chosen street photograph without permissions as a way of shooting method because simply I wanted to shoot natural expressions and attitudes without intentions of those people. On the street, I have chosen the people wearing clothes in punk way as subjects. The criteria for defining whether he/her is punk or not was difficult to state because the fact that punk is a state of mind makes it vague so I have shoot the people especially fitted in iconic punk fashion, such as punk band’s t-shirt, leather outfit with studs, and hair-style such as mohawk. At the beginning of taking those punks on the street, I was expected that the punks as deviant and outsider from our society with literally ‘punk’ attitude. However, through the several street photo session, I have noticed that most of those punks were hanging out with partner, pals, and dogs peacefully but with punks-like attitude. At that stage, I have stated the portfolio’s theme as ‘Anarchy and Harmony in the Brighton’ because I was fascinated by the antithetical concept between their anarchistic attitude and personality of harmony with others, as well as normal people. Considering the background of theme and its process above, I believe I can say that my portfolio succeeded to capture the conflict between punks’ anarchistic attitude from their outfits and styles and their actual feeling of being connected to their partners and society at certain extent.