In 1976 and 1977, Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon documented the London punk scene. Working directly with the young punks and encouraging a playful interaction, the two photographers produced a body of black-and-white work from their early student collaboration. Many of the photographs remained unpublished for over thirty years and were brought together for the first time in Punks, published by GOST Books in 2013.
The collaboration is central to the book’s approach. Knorr and Richon worked directly with their subjects, and the resulting images reflect that reciprocal engagement with the London punk scene. The project represents their early student collaboration, developed through a specific encounter with the people and places they photographed.
Across eighty pages, the sequencing presents the photographs as a coherent body of work. The book is a hardback with screen-printed cloth and includes an essay by Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon. The project itself documents a brief, formative collaboration whose images were withheld from publication for decades.
For readers interested in post-war British photography or punk-era visual culture, Punks makes available a body of work that was largely unseen for over thirty years. It records the early collaboration of two photographers and preserves their direct, playful engagement with the London punk scene.