DURAN DURAN - UNSEEN
Duran Duran Unseen is a rare collection of photographs by Paul Edmond that captures the essence of the post-punk glamour scene in the industrial English city of Birmingham in the early 1980s – including the rise of one of its most successful global exports, the pop band Duran Duran.
In 1980 Paul Edmond was a young, up-and-coming photographer in Birmingham who, besides the members of Duran Duran, was friendly with the leading participants in the Birmingham style explosion: Patti Belle and Jane Kahn whose Kahn & Belle label typified post-punk glam style; Jon Mulligan, keyboard player of the influential band Fashion; Jane Farrimond and Martin Degville who created the fashion label YaYa and later made their mark as members of Sigue Sigue Sputnik; the brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, owners of the Rum Runner nightclub who became Duran Duran’s managers.
These photographs of Duran Duran and their friends were taken between 1980 and 1982, starting before the band released their first single Planet Earth (in March 1981) and during their earliest taste of fame.
Paul Edmond’s distinctive style is best described as glamour reportage, with an uncanny ability for catching the moment, delving just below the image his subjects so desperately want to project without losing the magic. His pictures are both immediate and unmistakeably of their period, sometimes funny and often poignant.
In 1981 and 1982 Paul Edmond was a regular contributor to New Sounds New Styles, the music art and fashion magazine edited by Kasper de Graaf and designed by Malcolm Garrett of Assorted Images, who produced Duran Duran’s record sleeves, books, merchandise and print design from 1981 to 1986.
The first exhibition of Duran Duran Unseen premiered at the Brighton Media Centre in 2005. A tour is planned for 2005-06 and a book, ‘Paul Edmond: Duran Duran Unseen’, written and designed by de Graaf and Garrett, is to be published by Reynolds & Hearn in the Summer of 2005.
ORDER HERE
PAUL EDMOND MENU