21 September - 28 October 2016
Magnum Print Room, 63 Gee Street, London, EC1V 3RS
Open: 11:00 - 16:30, Wednesday – Friday

The Teds by Chris Steele-Perkins will be exhibited in the UK for the first time in nearly 40 years at Magnum Print Room, London. Iconic vintage prints from Steele-Perkins’ series documenting the uniquely British youth culture of the Teds will be shown alongside eight previously unseen photographs from his archive, and a platinum print of the cover image from his landmark book, The Teds. The exhibition will coincide with the launch of a new, re-designed version of this book by Dewi Lewis, first published in 1979.

Between 1976 and 1979 Steele-Perkins, working with the writer Richard Smith, documented the phenomenon of Ted culture across the UK in a series of striking black and white photographs. Steele-Perkins went beyond simply capturing the distinctive fashion of the movement by documenting the Teds interacting in the environs of the dance hall, the pub, the suburban home, car parks and seaside promenades. The series quickly became a classic of British social documentary photography.

Sixty years ago, 1956, was a watershed year for Teds, when the Bill Haley film Rock Around the Clock arrived in the UK and was screened at some three hundred cinemas across the country. It wasn’t long before the riots started – at London’s Elephant and Castle Trocadero seats were
slashed, and when the police attempted to disperse a throng of jiving, singing teenagers, bottles and
fireworks were thrown; four shop windows were smashed, and there was further trouble in many other cities including Manchester and London whilst in Birmingham, Blackpool, and Belfast the film was banned. The Teds became central to youth culture in the UK and could no longer be
ignored.


‘Their style was exotic, alien, menacing: Brylcreem elephant trunks, drapes, drainpipe trousers, luminous socks, beetle-crushers. Out on the streets, you could still find the fights. Down at the municipal baths, there was the penny-in-the-slot Brylcreem dispenser. A quick white greasy
squirt after a tone-up swim, the Ted could style his quiff, flicking and stroking with his plastic comb.
Then out back with the gang up the bus-shelter, someone might have got his head kicked in by baseball boots, boppers, or cowboy boots with spurs. The Teds had found their identities in the gangs. They had moved from the back-streets to the housing estates and headlines. And they did it to the back-beat of Rock ’n’ Roll.’ Richard Smith from the book, The Teds.

In the 1960s a new generation adopted Ted culture and in the mid-Seventies, yet a third generation adopted the Ted style - fashionable Seventies teenagers, spurred on by nostalgic radio, TV, and the cinema. This new set of 1970s Teds were known as ‘the plastics’ and were documented from 1976 - 1979, alongside the ‘veterans’ of the 1950s, by Steele-Perkins.

‘For Pop, the Fifties struck a chord more resonantly than any other period. It was the beginning; the lost innocence lies there. Fifties nostalgia provided Teds with an affirmation. They are remarkably durable. Unlike other teenage sub-cultures, they have persisted as a coherent movement but, in the process, they have changed with the passing of the years.’ Richard Smith.

The Teds by Chris Steele-Perkins with texts by Richard Smith will be published in September 2016 by Dewi Lewis, RRP £25.

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