A photographic history of late 1970s Auckland, starring shabby old Queen Street
Auckland in black and white always makes it look more interesting than it exists in its actuality of golden light and watery blue; it strips the city back, gives it substance. It's really the only way to look at the city during the years of punk and post-punk, 1979-1981, that brief, noisy period when teenagers from boring suburbs - Kohi, the Shore, Mt Roskill - set out to reclaim rock'n'roll, make it new, give it substance. Murray Cammick provided some of the best and most enduring photography of those times. His black and white cover for the Street Talk 12-inch single "Street Music" (1980) is one of the great images of Auckland life - a couple wearing a lot of denim, and kissing. Anthony Phelps went one better. He contributed to a masterpiece. His photograph of Dean Martelli playing a Burns Flyte guitar at a lunchtime concert at Selwyn College in Kohimarama was later given a tight crop by designer Terence Hogan, who used it as the cover of the AK79 album; it's become the defining icon of Auckland punk. The original photo appears alongside other pictures of punk rock life in Phelps' new illustrated book From AK79 to the Class of 1981.
Phelps went to Selwyn. He studied photography in the seventh form. That same year, the school staged a series of lunchtime concerts by The Terrorways (the band Martelli played in) and a bunch of other bands. Phelps took their photographs and set about documenting a whole bunch of other bands in concert and around town. His book is a scrapbook of the way things were in Auckland for teenagers during the hostile administration of Muldoon's National government.
The book actually strays beyond the years of its title. Phelps was there at the Bowie concert at Western Springs in 1983 (below). As many as 80,000 people attended; it was the largest-ever for a single show concert in either Australia or New Zealand. The set list included "Heroes", "Let's Dance", and "Rebel Rebel", and ended with "Star".
Phelps also went to see Kiss (below), who were better than Bowie. Tickets cost $12.50!
The book also features live shots of The Clash, Roxy Music and Madness, but Phelps is at his best photographing the young and the restless of Auckland, at bars in Airedale Street, Symonds Street, the Station Hotel on Anzac Avenue, the St Heliers RSA...The city looks ancient and shabby, cheap and fun - it looks like the best and most exciting time of a lot of people's lives.
From AK79 to the Class of 1981 by Anthony Phelps is available from selected bookstores, or direct from the author.
