Days of Punk | Fashion
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Punk is a term applied to a rock, visual, and cultural rebellion of a DIY disaffected generation who scoffed at the status quo of a homogenized culture. Influencing street art, punk rock was the soundtrack that emerged from the void created by music that sold its soul to the corporate machines of the financial centers of the world cities.

Rock’ n Roll was a synthesis of musical styles that progressed from the 1940s. Its roots are the core of Black culture and musical styles blended into a driving sound of revolution, joy, hope, and promise of a people. It fuses African American musical styles such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie, blues, gospel, and acapella folk.

The exact time, place, and song of the origins of rock n’ roll are disputable. It cannot be disputed that from the 1940s through the birth of punk, it was the sound of rebellion for the cultural revolution that was changing society inch by inch.

The Sound of the Soul

The moneymakers quickly absorbed the anti-poverty, anti-war, and anti-corporatist rebellions of the counterculture along with the music of rebellion.  In the garages of suburbia, and the emptiness of neighborhoods of urban decay the birth of a new wave, new rebellion, and new soundtrack was being created.

Punk rock is often described as a visceral reaction to the meaningless, sell-out corporate music of the counterculture, the extinguishing of the psychedelic awakening of the hippie generation. The disaffected who scoffed at selling out consciousness awakening had a new soundtrack. It was at once discombobulated, driving, rhythmic, remedial, loud, and primal.

The Clash Photographed by Michael Grecco

Bands like The Clash, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Dead Kennedy, The B-52s, Talking Heads, and others created the soundtrack of the soul of a generation determined to tear it down, build it again, and tear it down again. Michael Grecco a renowned photojournalist cracked the code and was fully immersed and accepted into the punk revolution.

Life In Black and White

Punk Rock was the soundtrack, but PUNK was more, oh so much more. The black-and-white reality of shadows and light was adeptly frozen in moments of punk time by the lenses of Michael Grecco. He captured punk as a music, punk as a vision, punk as a culture, punk as an art, and punk as a lifestyle. From iconic album covers featuring the graffitied street art of visual rebellion to the barren metallic art deco embellishments of pre-world-war buildings, the camera of Michael Grecco captured the visual world of punk in living black and white prints.

Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedys Photographed by Michael Grecco

From the bathrooms of clubs like CBGBs, and The Rat, to the empty lofts in abandoned buildings, punk street art was captured by the cameras of Grecco documented Punk as it happened.

The visual rebellion of punk had no time to wait for art supply stores to open, punk street art was created in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhoods of mid-century industrial wastelands. The parks, community gazebos, corners, and empty buildings of urban centers abandoned by the hippie culture who sought more middle-class digs were the canvas for punk rock street art.

The Sound and Vision of The Picture

The “snapshot” or still photograph is by its definition meant to be silent. The photographs by Michael Grecco that capture the early morning sun, and the last vestiges of dark during the day-to-day existence of the punk rebellion are not silent. Take but a minute to absorb the action, sound, and vision in the punk photos of Mr. Grecco and the soundtrack comes through loud and clear, the street art speaks, and the punk fashion attitude and rebellion of the soul shines.