This selection from The People’s Archive brings together photographs of British subculture from the 1960s through to the 1980s, spanning original mods and skinheads, 2 Tone, rudeboy style and the mod revival. These are not polished press pictures or art-school documents. They are vernacular photographs, sent in by the people who were there or kept by those close to the worlds they show.
That is exactly what gives them their value. Taken together, they capture how style, allegiance and identity were lived on the ground: in clubs, on streets, at scooter runs, outside pubs, and in the ordinary social spaces where subculture actually took shape. What they may lack in technical perfection, they more than make up for in proximity and historical weight.
Photo © Scarlett Meikle/The People’s Archive®
“My grandad and ‘The Boys’ (still a phrase he uses to this day) Most of them still meet up each weekend down the pubs in Stockport.”
Photo © Andrew Copley/The People’s Archive®
Andrew “My Dad and his pals enjoying a night out in 1965.”
Photo © Colin Staplehurst/The People’s Archive®
Colin “My sister Bonnie blow drying my close-crop/skin cut at home in Pimlico.”
Photo © Sean McManus/The People’s Archive.
Sean “With my friends outside Captain Jim’s Arcade in Kettering”.
Photo © Ian Nicholson/The People’s Archive®
Ian “We were all 15, bending the school dress code for a mod look! We all went on to get scooters.”
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