Back in June, I concurred with Alexis Petridis' argument that we should be wary of seeing the emergence of punk as a game-changing phenomenon, even if it did have significant impacts. However, perhaps it's all a matter of perspective. For those caught up in the maelstrom - such as DB Burkeman, talking to Miss Rosen for Huck - it really was "a seismic shift".
As Burkeman reveals, he never set out to be a photographer - he loved the "image" and it just happened. That much is evident from his lax policy towards archiving: bunging rolls of undeveloped film in a drawer at the family home and forgetting about them for the best part of half a century. For someone cursed with "a notoriously bad memory" due to teenage acid abuse, the pictures that have been salvaged - now collected in a book, Crash Bang: Pictures From A Punk - are of vital personal value, as well as painting an insider's view of the scene.
Burkeman's comment that "[t]here were 100 bands in London playing every night, and you only had to pay three quid, instead of £30, to see Eddie and the Hot Rods or The Damned" made me think of fellow punk photographer Denis O'Regan, who told me a few years back how punk made music much more accessible to photographers as well as musicians. For Regan, it was a critical stepping stone on the way to a stellar career, the most recent highlight of which is Bowie: Unseen / Unheard, an immersive audio-visual documentary/exhibition making use of his extensive archive as the late icon's official photographer.
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