SUPERHERO PUNKS: PHOTOGRAPHY FROM NIALL O’BRIEN

Our friends at Sick Of The Radio have posted another great photo blog that reminds us of the Penelope Spheeris ’84 cult classic Suburbia. Three years after her groundbreaking doc The Decline Of Western Civilization, and pre-dating  Wayne’s World, Spheeris traced a bunch of suburban punk runaways, including a very young, and then unknown Flea from The Chili Peppers, who squat out a minimalist, punk lifestyle in an abandoned tract home and display some, well,  “DIY” after school special acting chops. Worth dropping in the netflix queue  for the live footage of D.I. performing “Richard Hung Himself” and True sounds of liberty performing “darker my love”…and of course mini Flea putting a rat in his mouth.

In a similar vein of Suburbia, “Irish Photographer and filmmaker Niall O’Brien followed around an photographed south-west London punks for four years compiling his “Superhero” series which showed a few months back entitled “Good Rats”. In a quote from a recent interview Niall said,”I walk around with these kids and the noses that are turned up are unbelievable, people are disgusted by the kids and they think of them as rats, people think they’re despicable, but I feel, in my heart of hearts that they are good kids. Hanging the show has been easy, Art Works Space is a really beautiful gallery, I saw it and just thought yeah, perfect. It’s a massive space and I’ve had to fill it, I’ve never done things by halves, (laughs).” (sickoftheradio.com)

Check out some more images from “Superhero” below”:

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And here are some scenes from Suburbia. Seriously, check out mini Flea: