Punk Magazine Complete Run & archive

A comprehensive archive comprising the complete original run, 1976–1979, with accompanying photographs and later ephemera.

Original run, Issues #1–17 inclusive (#9 and #13 were never published).

Extras: Issue #20 (Summer 2007, Sid & Nancy cover); Issue #21 (Fall 2007, Tribute to CBGB Issue); Issue #22 (Iggy Pop / Every Loser: A Punk Magazine Extravaganza); D.O.A. Official Film Book; Japanese D.O.A. Film Book.

ROBERTA BAYLEY (B. 1950)

Five Photographs: Helen Wheels (Nick Detroit, Punk Magazine); Judy LaPilusa as Richard Hell's Girlfriend, Nick Detroit, NYC; Thor (Punk Magazine); Thor (Punk Magazine); Suicide, "Tang Connection," Punk Magazine

each signed, inscribed, dated and printed with the artist's copyright (on the reverse)

photographs

each: 10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Executed 1976–1977.

ROBERTA BAYLEY (B. 1950)

Two Photographs: The Sex Pistols in Concert

black-and-white photographs on laminated paperboard

each: 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm)

Executed circa 1978.

Plus an additional photograph of the Sex Pistols, c. 1978

Founded in January 1976 by John Holmstrom, Legs McNeil and Ged Dunn, Punk Magazine was the publication that named American punk — and gave the CBGB generation a visual and editorial vernacular entirely its own. Holmstrom, a School of Visual Arts graduate who had studied under Mad magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman, defined the publication's idiom: hand-lettered text, caricature portraiture and comic-strip sequencing — the print equivalent of what the Ramones were doing in sound. At its peak the magazine circulated over 23,000 copies per issue, and its influence ran far beyond that number: it directly inspired Sniffin' Glue and Ripped and Torn in Britain, and Slash (see lot 82) and Search & Destroy on the West Coast.

Roberta Bayley — already shooting at CBGB on the door — joined as chief photographer by Issue #3, after seeing the Lou Reed interview in Issue #1 illustrated as a comic strip in the visual idiom of classic American cartoonists, a Tales from the Crypt-via-EC-Comics aesthetic that defined the magazine's editorial voice. Alongside Bayley's photographs, the magazine's signature feature was the Nick Detroit fumetti — a black-and-white noir photo-comic starring Richard Hell as a retired cop, with the cast drawn from the wider scene.

The archive includes original photographs for the magazine shot by Roberta Bayley, and the magazine's later commemorative issues and tribute editions, alongside the D.O.A. film book and its rarer Japanese counterpart.

PROVENANCE:

From the personal archive of Roberta Bayley