Manchester photographer Kevin Cummins is releasing a collection of his iconic Joy Division images in a publication designed like a 1970s statistics textbook, in a good way. Titled Juvenes, it will be available Nov. 1 and includes personal essays by Natalie Curtis, Ian Rankin and others. Cummins was there since the very beginning -- the band's first ever performance as Warsaw, as a matter of fact - though in a recent piece for the Guardian he stated that "somehow that single strip of six frames has long since disappeared."
More from Cummins' essay:
"Ian & Co were learning how to pose as a band. I was learning how to shoot bands. We had our own agenda. It wouldn't be politic to release shots of Ian smiling, so on the rare occasion I captured a hint of a smile I cursed my bad luck at wasting a frame. Often, as Ian stood in front of my camera looking contemplative, the other band members, bassist Peter Hook 'Hooky', drummer Stephen Morris and guitarist Bernard Sumner, would stand behind him pulling faces. Occasionally Ian would yawn. These images only exist in my mind. I could never commit them to film. I couldn't afford to. Would my pictures tell a different story if I'd had the luxury of being able to shoot endless frames digitally?
Shots of the band in colour are rare. I only have six frames - shot on the end of a live roll of photos of Buzzcocks. It was pointless shooting the band in colour. I'd be wasting money. Publications that were prepared to feature the band only published in black and white. Peter Hook told me that even he thinks of Joy Division as a black and white band."
Here's the part that's either really awesome or really unfortunate, depending upon your ownage of mad coin -- the publication is limited to 26 signed and lettered copies for 500 pounds and 200 signed and numbered copies for 200 pounds. Guess most of us will just have to check out the fictional Joy Division in fellow photographer Anton Corbijn's upcoming flick Control (which, incidentally, Cummins dismissed as "false nostalgia" with "maladroit caricatures." Yikes.)
Related links:
ToHellWithPublishing.com
Paste: New Order spars as Corbijn exudes Control
TheTripWire.com: Joy Division Celebrated in Kevin Cummmins Book
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