Germany has one of the liveliest and well-developed punk scenes in the world. However, punk in this country is not just a style-based music community. This book provides an anthropological examination of how punk reflects the larger changes and contradictions in post-reunification Germany, such as social segmentation, east-west tensions and local politics. Punk in eastern Germany is a reaction to the marginalization of the working class. As a cultural, social and economic niche, punks create their own controversial “substitute society” to compensate for their low status in mainstream society.

"The world Watson depicts is so skillfully captured, giving an undeniable pull to these pictures...." --"FHM" What started off as a small collection of photographs the 14-year-old Gavin Watson would take of his family and friends in Wycombe, middle England, in the 1970s and 80s would grow into one of the most important and influential photographic youth culture books of the last 20 years. "Skins," published in 1994 and hailed by "The Times of London" as "a modern classic," has shown its influence in such photographers as Terry Richardson, Juergen Teller, and Ryan McGinley, as well as pretty much every kind of "youth" photography popular today. Last year, having persuaded him to begin working again after a long period of self-seclusion, VICE Books was bequeathed Watson's lost archives, hundreds of photos reaching deep into the lives of the subjects of his first book. Each photograph reveals an understanding and sensitivity that belies the sometimes brutal subject matter. "Skins & Punks" is a singular retrospective complete with commentaries and oral histories. The stories behind the shots are shocking, hilarious, severe, and heartbreaking, and each gets behind what it was really like to be a rebellious workingclass youth growing up in the 1980s. This is documentary photography at its best, a stunningly intimate window into a cultural movement. "Watson photographed from the inside, the only member of a provincial and isolated gang with a camera, only occasionally aware that his friends were part of a larger moment.... Some of his photographs are funny, some are tender, some are domestic. Many of them show skinheads smiling, others display a great vulnerability: young boys struggling for their place in an adult world. If there is aggression it is playful and uncertain. And in the background sits an unbeautified England of the 80s, a harsh depiction of extreme disunity." --"The Observer"

Perhaps one of the most reviled yet misunderstood of all the youth subcultures, the skinhead look and lifestyle has returned to the very forefront of contemporary youth culture. While celebrities and athletes shave their heads for the red carpet, the underbelly of British youth culture has rediscovered the look which is now more fashionable than it has ever been. The single most important photographic record of this unique subculture is Gavin Watson's Skins, now proudly released as a brand new edition, complete with dozens of previously unpublished photographs and a new chapter. These black-and-white shots offer a fascinating glimpse into a skinhead community that was multi-cultural, tightly knit, and above all else, fiercely proud of their look. These are classic photographs of historical value.

Since their birth in the late 1960’s as a working class subcultural response to what was seen as a feminised, bourgeois-hippy parent culture, the skinhead has since held a semi-mythological status amongst the UK’s street tribes. But from the off, queer undercurrents inevitably ran through skinhead culture, as shaven heads, shiny DMs and tight Levis fed inevitably into fantasies and fetishes based around notions of ultra-masculinity. In this updated 1996 mini classic, Murray Healy looks into the myths and misapprehensions surrounding Gay Skins, exploring fascism, fetishism, class , sexuality and gender.

This original collection of insight, analysis and conversation charts the course of punk from its underground origins, when it was an un-formed and utterly alluring near-secret, through its rapid development. Punk is Dead: Modernity Killed Every Night takes in sex, style, politics and philosophy, filtered through punk experience, while believing in the ruins of memory, to explore a past whose essence is always elusive.

'Skinheads' is the story of a way of life, told through three generations of a family - Terry English, original ska-loving skinhead and boss of a mini-cab firm; Nutty Ray, street-punk skin and active football hooligan; and Lol, son of Terry, nephew of Ray, a 15-year-old kid just starting out.