Siouxsie: Exposures 1982 (Moonboy)
Ritchie Franklin & Fabrice Couillerot, Sheila Rock and Sian Pattenden
Siouxsie: Exposures 1982 is a beautiful limited edition photo book featuring an iconic photo shoot with Siouxsie Sioux at Sheila Rock’s studio in Ladbroke Grove in January 1982.
The photo used for the cover of The Face magazine in that year is one of the best-known images of Siouxsie Sioux. But the other images from the shoot have remained in Sheila Rock’s private archive, unseen, until now. Sixty-eight of those photos are captured in this book.
Published by Moonboy Ltd, responsible for similar books on The Cure (Stills), Dead Or Alive and the New Romantics, this book is similarly high-quality, positioning itself as a collectors’ item.
The book’s Foreword is provided by Sian Pattenden, who gives an overview of the power of Siouxsie and her Banshees at that time, about to embark on a world tour that would take in Japan. She provides a great quote from John Klein (a Banshees guitarist), who describes Siouxsie as “a cross between the lovely big sister I never had and the worst headmistress you could imagine.” It then becomes impossible not to see both of these attributes in all of these pictures.
Pattendon remarks on how “radiant” Siouxsie is in front of the camera – impossibly confident would be another apt descriptor. The photos are a product of a perfect synergy between photographer and subject, with an equal input into the final result. But it’s Siouxsie’s self-assured stare that stops the vivid red colour from becoming overly distracting. In black and white, the photos are equally striking,
It’s then over to Sheila Rock for her account of the shoot. A renowned photographer in her own right, she talks about exploring the combination of her interests in music and fashion whilst on Bowie’s Ziggy tour, when she was married to that other photo legend, Mick Rock. Not a bad way to start out – taking candid photos of David Bowie, moving on from him to The Clash, and then to Siouxsie And The Banshees.
Knowing that the Banshees were off to Japan, she came up with the idea of a Japanese-themed shoot. “The imagery matched Siouxsie’s persona at that point so well, in her own way she was very kabuki. When she stepped into the clothes, it was like a light bulb came on. The look and Siouxsie just fitted together perfectly.”
The final word comes from Lloyd Johnson, and we’re told: “Justice would be served if Lloyd Johnson’s name held as much weight as Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm Mclaren, Paul Smith and John Simons in terms of making a huge mark on street style, menswear and contemporary British fashion as a whole.” He dressed an enviable list of names including Keith Richards, Roxy Music, Rod Stewart, The Clash, George Michael, Blondie, Iggy Pop, the list goes on.
He discusses starting off in a stall in Kensington Market in 1974, and how he’d developed his Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide collection, featuring Japanese kanji print and the red sun design, and the sequence of events leading his designs being splashed all over The Face being modelled by Siouxsie. “To me, clothes and style should be fun. We had a slogan: ‘If it ain’t fun it don’t get done.’ We had another: ‘Sworn to fun, loyal to none’. We put that on a shirt too…. I look back at it all and see that they were very exciting days but I don’t think I actually realised at the time.”
A stunning collectors item for Siouxsie Sioux fans but also for followers of Sheila Rock, or devotees to punk and post-punk fashion, or Lloyd Johnson himself. A vibrant record of a punk icon.
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Words by Naomi Dryden-Smith: Louder Than War |Facebook |Twitter |Instagram |portfolio
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