WE'RE DESPERATE BY JIM JOCOYÂ
Found this little picture book at the infamous Green Apple bookstore here in San Francisco. A straightforward, stripped down, glaring, visual commentary, displaying the fashion of a developing punk scene here in SF and LA from '78-80. It's not Jim Jocoy's talent as a photographer that makes this book special - it's that attitude, the day-glo nuclear colors, unapologetic stares, exposed by his flash in the dark hallways of club basements. Foreword by MARC JACOBS, interview with THURSTON MOORE of Sonic Youth, and beautiful prose by EXENE CERVENKA, singer of X.
"I was seduced by punk. Not at first by the sound, but by the visual noise that came from it, from the scene ... I was attracted by a look, stayed for the music and left having fallen in love with the fantastic absurdity of it all." - Marc Jacobs
"We didn't like poseurs, but we liked to pose for pictures, because we knew that there was something about that night that would be remembered even if we couldn't remember it. We were young and naive in a way that seems to be a lost art. We were snotty and compassionate and deliberate and reckless, but we knew exactly what we were doing. We were ghosts then and we are ghosts now." Â - Exene Cervenka