Siouxsie

SHEILA ROCK (B. 1952)
Siouxsie
signed and numbered '3/30' in ink (reverse)
black & white digital print
16 × 12 inches (40.6 × 30.5 cm)
this is number 3 from an edition of 30
this work is sold unframed and unmatted

Sheila Rock photographed Siouxsie Sioux in February 1979 against a flat black backdrop — heavy kohl eye makeup under a dark fringe, a tartan-collared jacket worn over a white lace jabot, chin pulled downward and gaze cut straight into the lens. The sitting falls between the Banshees' debut The Scream (November 1978) and the follow-up Join Hands (September 1979), capturing Siouxsie at the exact pivot where the band's own visual grammar was being solidified in real time. Rock would photograph Siouxsie again in 1982 for her better-known Japanese kabuki-inspired Face commission, but the 1979 portrait sits at an earlier and quieter register: the makeup heavier, the clothing more archival-Victorian than theatrical, the composition stripped to a single figure against darkness. The piece is part of Rock's 1976–1980 London punk archive, later collected in Punk+ (First Third Books, 2013).