Anxious Images: Linder's Fem-Punk Photomontages

Abstract

Discussion of British punk visual culture has generally been restricted to the work of the male protagonists, such as Jamie Reid's designs for the Sex Pistols. Jones seeks to present a wider view of punk imagery and its context by discussing the little-known photomontage work of the artist Linder Sterling during 1977-9. Her images are considered in the context of her other work (performance, music and graphic design), the concerns of radical feminism (namely, gender and representation) and feminist-inflected, iconoclastic photographic-based practices of the 1970s. Furthermore, drawing on the work of various theorists, such as Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and Angela McRobbie, he argues that Linder's use and subversion of mass media imagery represents a critique of constructed gender identities and the consumer society.

Keywords:

• feminism
• gender
• Linder
• mass media
• photomontage
• popular culture
• punk
• representation