Chances are that if you dig underground music, you will harbour an appreciation for Joy Division and New Order. If you close your eyes and envision Ian Curtis and co in their heyday, chances are what will appear is a depiction that has been channelled through the lens of Kevin Cummins, a photographer that like no other depicted the band against the backdrop of their grimy home turf, i.e. industrial Manchester of the Thatcher-era. Cummins’ photos of Joy Division have been seared into the collective mind of popular culture.
Juvenes was originally published in 2007 and has long been sought after, so it was high time for it to see an enhanced re-release director’s cut treatment, which is enriched with previously unseen contact sheets, embedded in essays and interviews along with additional details and previously unseen additions from Joy Division’s vault.
Needless to say, the photographs are almost exclusively in black and white and while this monochrome approach could end up being a monotonous affair, the way Cummins captures not only the DNA of Joy Division but especially the composition and attention to detail paired with the fact that he was allowed into the inner sanctum of the band’s life, make it a collection of unique, iconic and stunning moments.
With a documentation spanning a bygone era that starts with Joy Division opening for the Buzzcocks in 1977 to the Orchestrated Joy Division night held at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 2018 and culminating in a comprehensive interview with Peter Hook, this opulently illustrated, timeless book creates an immediacy and permanence in the portrayal of Ian’s and the band’s fragility and vulnerability that many other related photo books lack.
A lavish book that is not merely an elegiac ode to the becoming of what Joy Division still means to many today but one that affirms the immortality of their oeuvre,
