Girl’s Subcultures: Visible Girls – Anita Corbin (1980 – 81)

Visible Girls

An exhibition of colour photography by Anita Corbin:

It’s not just a question of looking like a . . . you really feel like one inside.’

Belonging to a ‘subculture’ is not just a weekend hobby, it is a whole way of life.

The panels show, in order of appearance: rockabillies, mods, rude-girls, skinheads, and some of the girls at home, followed by a selection of less well-defined groups, that fall loosely under the headings: punk, futurist, soul-funk, soul, rasta and women in and around the women’s liberation movement. 15 laminated panels, size 29″ x 20″.  

An exhibition of colour photography by Anita Corbin: “I began to study the informal ‘uniforms’ of young women in August 1980. I had already looked, in a previous project, at the formal uniforms, the ‘ready-made’ stereotypes found in schools, at work and in other institutions. So in this project, I turned my attention to more personal visual details and I became increasingly interested in the effect appearances have on everybody’s lives. The way we often use dress as a means of communication/identification and how it can both inform and misinform us.”

15 laminated panels (29″ x 20″)

Anita wrote about her project in Schooling and Culture Issue 11 Spring 1982