Jordan by the Jukebox

SHEILA ROCK (B. 1952), 1977
Jordan by the Jukebox 
Signed in ink (lower right, recto); numbered 4/30 photograph
Sheet: 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) image: 19 x 12 3/4 inches (48.3 x 32.4 cm) 
executed in 1977.
This is number 4 from an edition of 30

Jordan — born Pamela Rooke — is photographed here by Sheila Rock in 1977 at 430 King's Road, leaning against an AMI jukebox in a loose leather trench with her hair combed into the peroxide fin that had made her a visual anchor of British punk. A vintage LET IT ROCK price tag is just visible at right, a callback to the 1971 origin of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's shop, which by 1977 had run through the sequence of retitles (Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, SEX, Seditionaries) that traced the store's everchanging style from Teddy boy revival through fetishwear into full punk. Jordan was arguably the most photographed shop assistant in the history of British fashion — she commuted daily from Seaford in the extreme punk looks the store sold, appeared in Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978), and became one of the defining faces of the movement's first year.

Rock was one of the few photographers granted the kind of proximity to the London punk scene, working across Sounds, NME, The Face, and the surrounding circuit through the late 1970s, that allowed her to build a body of work that has since become the visual record for the period. 

Literature:
Young Punks, Omnibus Press.

Exhibition History:
Orlando Museum of Art, 2024