Virginia Turbett is a music and social photographer best known for her photographs of bands, fans, and street culture between 1977 and 1987. Working at a moment when British youth culture was shifting at speed, she documented punk, post-punk, and the early stirrings of new wave, capturing not just the musicians on stage but the scenes that formed around them — the queues outside venues, the DIY culture, the energy of people shaping their own communities through music.

Alongside this, Turbett was an active presence at protests and demonstrations throughout the UK. Her photographs highlighted people from across the country who were standing up for their livelihoods and their rights: shipyard workers on the Clyde facing closure, traders marking the final days of Billingsgate Market, and communities dealing with the wider impact of de-industrialisation. She approached these subjects with the same focus she brought to the music world — showing individuals and groups in the places where their lives were being reshaped.

Turbett covered major political events of the 1970s and early 1980s, including the Right to Work demonstrations and the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism movement. Her images from this period record both the gigs and the protests that stood against the rise of the National Front and far-right politics. Rather than presenting protest as spectacle, she photographed it as lived experience: the handmade banners, the crowds gathering in local parks, and the sense of determination that held these movements together.