For photographer Jeanie Jean, the punk aesthetic holds a very special place in her heart. Introduced to the Sex Pistols by her mother during a car ride to Sainsbury’s in the 90s, Jean reverted back to punk during the first wave of the pandemic, finding solace through her heartbreak. “I desperately needed something to do. Something creative to help me get through the grieving process,” she remembers. “I had actually lost my mother and my grandmother during the first lockdown, and didn’t get a chance to say goodbye properly. I had lost two strong women in my family and I was broken.” After comforting herself in the punk music from her youth, Jean had what she describes as “a lightbulb moment” – and her Not Dead series was born.
Taken across different parts of the UK – from London to Salford and back again – there are a handful of micro-elements that place Jean’s portraits in the modern day. A Kappa belt here, some recently released Converse there, a couple iPhones clutched in hands. But on the macro-level, if we zoom out and glance through the photographs, they look as if they could have been taken at any point between now and the mid 1970s – and a lot of this has to do with the style. “I give them completely free reign to dress how they want in whatever style they feel most comfortable in,” says the photographer. “The day before doing their portrait, someone might send over photos of one or two outfits and I’d ask, ‘what feels more you?’”
In the photos, young people adorn themselves with the paraphernalia you might find during the early days of punk, with badges galore, acid wash denim, Fred Perry polos and beaten up leather featured throughout. Heavy make-up and intimidating spiked hair crop up a lot, as Jean’s subjects gnash their teeth and stare the camera down, time-warped visitors from another era. And though there was no specific direction, Jean was intent on capturing the anachronistic feeling that the styling suggests. “I do feel like the last four years have almost been an echoing of Thatcher’s Britain,” says Jean. “Recession, unemployment, cost of living, independent venues closing – and this is all happening now in Johnson’s/Truss’s/Sunak’s Britain.” In this way, punk fashion was originally established to challenge middle class codes of civility through provocation, so it makes sense that Jean would want to re-champion this specific aesthetic for our current political malaise.
For all of Jeanie Jean’s time-warped punk portraits, scroll through the gallery above.